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07th Nov 2017

It turns out Rose could have saved Jack in Titanic if they had done this

We knew it!

Keeley Ryan

It’s been 20 years since Titanic first hit cinemas.

And despite all that time, there’s one moment in the Hollywood blockbuster that is still being debated: could both Rose and Jack have survived?

As the ship begins its descent into the icy sea near the end of the film, passengers are left fighting for their lives in the sub-zero conditions.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack, desperate to save Rose, decides to roll off the door they’re using as a raft, leaving her solely on top of it.

But now three Australian schoolgirls have proven there was definitely room for Jack on the door – and that both he and Rose could have survived.

Year 10 students Abigail Wicks, Christy Zhang and Julia Damato used their own research and maths formula to try and find out if the pair could’ve survived.

The trio, from Westminster School in Adelaide, found that if the two characters had put their life jackets underneath the door, there would’ve been room for Jack and they would’ve stayed afloat.

16-year-old Christy came up with the idea when she was watching Titanic, wondering if Jack had stood a chance of survival.

Abigail explained to The Advertiser in Adelaide:

“We looked at how buoyant the door would have been, and how that would have changed if there were people on top of that.

“There was a lot of exploring and testing, and we had to fiddle with different buoyancies and look at what materials were realistic for that time.”

Teammate Julia added that they also considered the buoyancy of the door would have been affected by the amount of salt in the water.

The trio presented their their at the National Maths Talent Quest, where they won an award for their work.

It comes as the film’s director James Cameron tried to settle the debate once and for all earlier this year.

Mythbusters dedicated an entire episode to the topic back in 2013, where they decided that the door/raft/lifesaver would’ve been buoyant enough to support the pair.

And while Cameron, who also featured on the episode, agreed that the team were probably right, he seems to have changed his tune a bit.

He told the Daily Beast:

“OK, so let’s really play that out: you’re Jack, you’re in water thats 28 degrees (-2C), your brain is starting to get hypothermia.

Mythbusters asks you to now go take off your life vest, take hers off, swim underneath this thing, attach it in some way that it won’t just wash out two minutes later – which means you’re underwater tying this thing on in 28-degree water, and that’s going to take you five to ten minutes, so by the time you come back up you’re already dead.

“So that wouldn’t work.

“His best choice was to keep his upper body out of the water and hope to get pulled out by a boat or something before he died.”