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Submarine Officer
Commands or operates military or research submarines — navigating underwater for weeks or months.
Did you know?
Nuclear submarines make their own oxygen and fresh water from seawater, using electrolysis and desalination.
How subjects help
- Physics: Fill and empty ballast tanks so the submarine sinks, rises or hovers at just the right depth.
- Mathematics: Track your position underwater from speed, direction and time when there is no satellite signal.
- Engineering: Keep the machines that make fresh air and drinking water running for weeks under the sea.
- Communication: Give calm, clear orders so a crew in a cramped space works together as one team.
A famous name
Hyman G. Rickover: Served on submarines in 1929–33, then led the building of USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine.
Try it yourself: Make a sauce-packet submarine
- Drop a sachet into the bowl of water. It needs to only just float, so try a few until you find one that does.
- Fill the bottle right to the top with water, push the sachet in and screw the cap on tightly. Do this over a sink.
- Squeeze the sides of the bottle and watch the sachet sink. Let go and watch it rise.
- Try to make it hover halfway down. How gently do you have to squeeze?
Submarines dive and surface by changing how dense they are, letting water into their ballast tanks or blowing it out with air.
Adapted from Buffalo Museum of Science: Cartesian Divers.
Also try: Keep two trains safely apart.
Known for it in
USA, UK, France, Russia, Australia