100 years on: New ChemNet competition aims to find out how chemistry is linked with Titanic tragedy

One hundred years ago, on April 10^th 1912, the first ever ‘unsinkable’ passenger liner left the port of Southampton on her maiden voyage – the RMS Titanic. But even the especially designed watertight compartments could not prevent the outcome of the tragic collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean only four days later. This Sunday marks the 100^th year anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic following this collision.  

To commemorate the tragic event, the last few weeks have seen – amongst other activities – a memorial cruise on the MS Balmoral that retraces the steps of the Titanic’s first and only voyage and the re-launch of James Cameron’s romantic disaster film ‘Titanic’ in 3D. But even if you do not fancy watching Kate and Leo, you can still join in on ‘Titanic’-related activities because we have made the sinking of the passenger liner the theme of this month’s ChemNet competition.

ChemNet is the RSC network for 16-18 years old chemistry students, and every month we pose a chemistry-related question to our ChemNet discussion group members. So what does a sinking ship have to do with chemistry, you might wonder? To keep it simple: a whole lot more than you think. Because without chemistry, there would be no icebergs. And therefore this month’s question is:

“If water behaved as almost all other liquids do when they freeze, we would not have icebergs. Why does water behave differently when it freezes?”

If you are a chemistry student between 16 and 18 years old, we want to hear your answers. To enter, please email your responses to chemnet@rsc.org by Monday 30^th April. The winning answer will be selected by our Dr ChemNet experts.

Last month we asked our ChemNet members ‘What is chemistry?’ ‘That’s simple!‘ you say? Maybe not so much so, when you start thinking of all the things that chemistry encompasses and having to describe it in less than 50 words. But our members didn’t let us down and surprised us with some very thoughtful and creative answers. To find out what the winning answers by Thomas Sayer, Timothy Little and Sophie Jones were, just take a look at the ChemNet discussion group.