physical properties

Did you know that snow is hot?

Ruzica Dadic & Martin Schneebeli September 9, 2022

Figure 1: MicroCT images of fresh snow on melting sea ice during the late summer phase of the MOSAiC expedition a) and snow at the same location six hours later (b). The large structures at the bottom of a) show the melting sea ice surface, also known as the surface scattering layer. [Credit: Ruzica Dadic]

When I was a student, Martin told me matter-of-factly that snow is hot. I probably looked as baffled as I felt (and you are probably doing the same). Were we talking about the same thing? Continue reading to discover why snow is hot! Discovering that snow is hot So why is snow hot? Most snow under Earth’s environmental conditions has a homologous temperature Th close to 1. The homologous temperatu ...[Read More]

The softness of ice, how we measure it, and why it matters for sea level rise

Emma Smith & TJ Young June 25, 2021

Figure: The Scott Polar Research Institute’s beautiful fabric maps show that Antarctica is composed of the combination of many different aspects, including snow, rocks, volcanoes, and biological life. Although the fabric of ice does not refer to material textiles, the analogy is similar in that ice fabric represents the physical composite of all its constituent ice crystals. [Image credit: Derek Langley / Naomi Chapman (SPRI University of Cambridge)]

One of the first things school children learn is that ice is a solid, and forms by freezing water. Most people think of ice as brittle–have you ever dropped a slippery ice cube on the kitchen floor, and watch it break and shatter into many pieces? It may be surprising, then, to find that ice can also stretch and squeeze, like a ball of pizza dough! Once deformed, ice is then softer in certai ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Why is ice colourful?

Johanna Kerch May 4, 2018

Figure 1: Thin sections (~9 cm in height) from Alpine glacier ice at 1 mm thickness before polishing photographed under crossed polarisers [Credit: Johanna Kerch]

When you think of glacier ice, what colour first springs to mind? Maybe white, blue or transparent? Well, glacier ice can, in fact, be mesmerising and multi-coloured! Our image of the week shows thin sections of glacier ice under polarised light. These sections were cut from block samples of two Alpine glaciers in Switzerland (Chli Titlis and Grenzgletscher). In these images the individual ice c ...[Read More]