Why would two large ships running in the same direction at high speed crash into each other?
On an autumn day in 1912, the world’s largest ocean liner at that time – the “Olympic” ship was sailing out at sea. In a place 100 meters away from the “Olympic” ship, the armored cruiser “Mong khơ” was much smaller, running parallel to it. A sudden incident occurred: the small ship was like being sucked back by the big ship, completely out of control, crashing into the “Olympic,” causing it to breach a large hole.
What causes this problem? Let’s experiment first. Left and right hands, each holding a piece of paper in the exercise so that they are parallel to each other, the distance between them about 2 cm. Use your mouth to blow air into the gap in the middle; you will detect, the two sheets of paper will attract together. This is because the faster the speed of air movement, the smaller the pressure generated. When the air is blown between the two sheets of paper, the air movement’s speed becomes faster, and the pressure becomes smaller. At that time, air pressure on the two sides of the paper is greater than the air pressure in the middle. Under the impact of air pressure on both sides, the two sheets of paper were absorbed together. If the airflow is stopped, the two sheets are separated, returning to their original parallel position.
Through this experiment, we have no trouble finding the cause of the “Olympic” ship incident. It turned out that, when the two ships ran parallel to the front, the water between the two ships flowed faster than the water on the outside. Therefore, water pressure on the inside of two vessels is smaller than that of the outer surface. So under the pressure of the surface water, the two ships closed together. Because the “Mong Kho” ship was much smaller than the “Olympic” ship, the bow of the “Mong Kho” pierced the “Olympic” ship.
Through this incident, people learned a profound lesson. To avoid repetition of the same incident, people have set strict rules for the speed of operation of the ship and the distance between one ship and another.
