(September 28, 2015 at 12:20 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: I just wanted to address the knucklehead's claim about Noah's Ark.
A wooden ship of those proportions would be unable to survive a catastrophic storm lasting 40 days because of a phenomenon called "hogging". This happens when a ship breasts the waves -- as the ship tops the wave and the wave passes under the hull, the unsupported or less-supported ends, both bow and stern, sag due to gravity. Then as the ship enters the trough the ends regain buoyancy. Given enough repetitions, the ship will end up breaking apart. It wasn't until the advent of metal framework for ships in the mid 19th century that ships larger than about 350' could be built with the expectation of surviving any length of time in stormy seas.
Noah's Ark was reputedly 450' long, about 100' feet past the seaworthy mark. It would have been broken up in such a cataclysmic storm.
That story is simply false, for that reason alone.
There are accounts of Chinese treasure ships from the 15th century, being up to 600' long.
