The rivets popped, the plates buckled, Titanic sank. Lets blame the rivets!!!!!!!

The plates were stronger than the rivets because they are made in a different way. As metal is heated and cooled, its properties change, so it becomes weaker, but it needs to be slightly weaker so it can be hammered(rivetted)on the other side of a plate, sealing it together. (I have tried to explain this basic engineering principle as simply as I can)
The rivets were the best they could have been made in their day. With hindsight they weren't great quality by today's standard, but don't forget - every ship at that time was built with them.
Olympic used them, and as well as surviving her collision with HMS Hawke, crashed into the Nantucket Lightship and survived until she was scrapped in 1935.
Nomadic was also built using the same rivets, and she is sitting in Belfast Harbour right now, 96 years after she was launched.

Rivets were designed to hold the plates together. Ships weren't designed to crash into icebergs at full speed. Titanic sank due to a number of factors, the rivets being only one of them. Lets not blame them when they were only doing their job.

Strider_uk