TASK 1. Translate the list of English phrases that will be used during the discussion

• passenger liner
• to collide
• to hit the obstacle head
• the front of the ship
• crew
• frontal impact
• linear deceleration
• to decelerate
• readily
• rate of deceleration
• in time
• approximate
• momentum
• to any significant degree 
• variable
• a rough estimate
• to occur
• shock
• absorption
• shock absorption
• bending steel
• crushing ice
• to result in
• heavily
• weather of not

TASK 2. Read the definitions to the engineering terms, make sure you understand them before translating the article that is given below.

• deceleration - 1. the slowing down of a moving object, 2. a decrease in the rate at which something expands
• momentum - the product of a body's mass and its velocity
• absorption - a reduction of the intensity of any form of radiated energy as a result of energy conversion in a medium, such as the conversion of sound energy into heat 

TASK 3. Translate the given article.

The Titanic

It’s been suggested that the passenger liner ‘the Titanic’ wouldn’t have sunk after colliding with an iceberg in 1912, if it had hit the obstacle head on and damaged only the front of the ship. As history tells, the crew tried to avoid the iceberg, and 1,517 lives were lost. But how severe would a front impact have been for he passengers? The answer depends on several questions:

• The ship tried to slow while turning. Would linear deceleration have been more effective, allowing the ship to decelerate more readily?
• Based on this rate of deceleration (and assuming the ship would not have stopped in time), what would the velocity of the ship have been at the same moment of impact?
• What was the mass of the iceberg? Calculating the approximate number of kilograms of ice would allow the inertia of the iceberg to be compared with the momentum of the Titanic. This would show whether the impact would have caused the iceberg to accelerate to any significant degree, and so absorb some of the shock as it was pushed forward.

Clearly, the above questions depend on numerous unknown variables. So let’s make a rough estimate. Let’s assume the impact would have occurred at a pretty fast 25 kilometres per hour – that’s seven metres per second. And allowing for some shock absorption from bending steel and crushing ice, let’s say the ship would have stopped within three seconds (although it would probably have taken longer).
This would have resulted in a deceleration of 2.3 metres per second squared. Express as a G-force, that gives 0.23 – less than one-third of the deceleration generated by a car braking heavily. So the impact probably wouldn’t have caused too much of a shock to the passengers. Whether or not the ship would have sunk, however, is another question.