Before the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean 100 years ago, the ship was deemed “unsinkable.”

In a recent CTV News report, Professor Doug Perovic (MSE) explained how several design flaws led to the Titanic’s demise.

“Essentially, three contributing factors led to a perfect storm,” he said. “There’s hitting the iceberg, but also the cold water temperature and the quality of the steel. Those are the initial factors that led to this gaping hole.”

Professor Perovic pointed out that 100 years ago, it wasn’t known that certain impurities in steel, principally sulfur, behave like glass under very low temperatures.

“Better steel would have bent,” he added. “It wouldn’t have fractured in so many pieces – and the end result would have been different.”