Re:A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
by throwaway0a5e on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @08:07AM
(#25275965)
The chain is made of harder (by a substantial enough margin to not wear through too quickly) metal than the ship. Also, the cross section of any given link is much thicker than any one piece of steel in the ship so it doesn't really need to cut efficiently, it just kind of crunches and tears the ship out of the way using the ship's own weight.
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Re:A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
by SamBam on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @09:28AM
(#25276595)
True, although
> “Approximately 25 hours into the cut, the cutting chain broke,” St. Simons Incident Response writes on its website.
Re:A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
by jacquesm on Wednesday December 02, 2020 @09:51AM
(#25276812)
It's a wear part. Yes, it will wear, but that's logical, just like a knife will get dull when cutting cheese. The impressive bit to me is that it lasted 25 hours. They then fixed that one link and went on cutting. Keep in mind that it still is a chain and that all it took was for one link to break under a load that was not exactly typical for a chain and after some abrasion of the link itself.