On August 12, 2000, the Russian submarine Kursk sank to the bottom of the sea, approximately 95 meters below the surface. Can you find the following at the depth of the Kursk?

(a) The water pressure: pressure =

(b) The force on a 4 meter square metal sheet held
Horizontally 95 meters below the surface:
force =

(c) Vertically with its bottom 95 meters below the surface:
force =

(Assume #(g = 9.8 m/s^2)#

I am not sure where to start with this. It feels like I am missing information.

1 Answer
Gió
Nov 16, 2016

You coud use Stevin's Law to evaluate the change in pressure at various depths:

Explanation:

You will also need to know the density #rho# of sea water (from literature you should get: #1.03xx10^3(kg)/m^3# which is more or less accurate considering that probably because of the cold sea (I think it was the Barents Sea) and of the depth probably would change but we can approximate to be able to make our calculation).

Stevin Law:

#P_1=P_0+rhog|h|#
enter image source here

As Pressure is #"force"/"area"# we can write:

#"force"="pressure"xx"area"=1.06xx10^6xx4=4.24xx10^6N#

I supposed the metal sheet area of #4m^2# otherwise if is a square of #4m# of side simply replace #4# by #16# into the above.

The orientation of the metal sheet should not give a big difference; considering a depth of #95m# pressure changes with depth but in #4m# the change should be quite small...I think.

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