Challenge One Winners

OK, so here's how it worked out:

We had 728 submissions to the first challenge from 577 different teams. Most of you got pretty close to the right answer with 339 teams getting it exactly right. Congratulations to all of you. We'll be sending out posters to the first 213 teams. The following were drawn at random from the first fifty correct entries received and will be getting a fifty pound cheque. I know I said we would draw from the first twenty five, but the rules said the first fifty so we had better stick with that:

Julian Granger-Bevan of Varndean College,

Karim M Ladhu of North London Tutorial College,

The Guilford Colossus Ben King of Ellis Guilford School And Sports College,

Simon Pinder, Steven Rowley ( Steve & SJP) of Queen Mary's Grammar School

and the Iron Raven, Edward Huggett of Kings' School.

For the record Yan Mei of St. Annes was the first to submit a correct entry last week. Well done Yan Mei!.

By the way there are over 2,200 of you registered from around 1100 teams.

You can view the solution to last weeks challenge in Chapter 1 of the Journal. The next challenge (Chapter 2) will go up at or soon after 4pm today (Thursday 9th October), here and at Education.Guardian.co.uk, but but the server will be down for a short while before then for maintenance. If you want to read some more about the tale of the Suevic, then read the extended entry for this note.

The White Star liner Suevic has a remarkable story. On 17th March 1907 she ran aground on rocks off the Lizard. Her bow was wrecked by the collision whcih was so severe that the owners were unable to float her, but amazingly the stern section remained dry. Engineers cut the ship in two using dynamite (which had been invented by Alfred Nobel in 1866 (yes, the Nobel whose fortune sponsors, among other things, the Nobel peace prize). We assume that this apparently extreme method was the only practical technique available to separate the two halves safely. According to one website "although this sounds quite dangerous, a skilled operator could use just the right amount of charge to remove a rivet head ". Another web site claims that gas cutting equipment had not yet been invented, but the oxyacetylene torch was invented in 1900 by Edmund Fouche (or was it Charles Picard? or the Canadian Thomas Wilson? the history of Science and technology is not as straightforward as you might think) and can reach temperatures of 300C, more than enough to cut steel. It works by combining oxygen with the gas acetylene, which was discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy's cousin Edmund Davy in 1836.
Once the stern was free it was sailed to Southampton for refitting. The most remarkable feature of this voyage is that the Suevic, mnus her bow sailed under own steam with tugs used only for steering purposes, remaining watertight throughout the voyage. Normally refitting would refer to a general refurbishment, but in this case of course the ship needed to have an entirely new bow fitted. This remarkable operation was carried out in two stages by the shipwrights Harland and Wolff in Belfast, who constructed the new bow, and then by J. I. Thorneycraft & Co who attached the new bow in dock at Southampton.

The story of Suevic can be found at Great Ships and Titanic-Titanic

You can read more about the inventors Alfred Nobel, The Davys and Thomas Wilson around the web, and look up Acetylene on the wikipedia.