Online Encyclopedia

ICEBERG (from ice and Berg, Ger. for ...

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V14, Page 227 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ICEBERG (from ice and Berg, Ger. for hill, mountain)  , a floating mass of ice broken from the end of a glacier or from an ice-
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sheet . The word is sometimes, but rarely, applied to the arch of an Arctic glacier viewed from the sea . It is more commonly used to describe huge floating masses of ice that drift from polar regions into navigable waters . They are occasionally encountered far beyond the polar regions, rising into beautiful forms with breakers roaring into their caves and streams of
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water pouring from their pinnacles in the warmer air . When, however, they rest in comparatively warm water, melting takes place, most rapidly at the
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base and they frequently overturn . Only one-ninth of the mass of ice is seen above water . When a glacier descends to the sea, as in
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Alaska, and " advances into water, the
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depth of which approaches its thickness, the ends are broken off and the detached masses float away as icebergs . Many of the bergs are overturned, or at least tilted, as they set
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sail . If this does not happen at once it is likely to occur later as the result of the
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wave-cutting and melting which disturb their equilibrium" (T . C . Chamberlin and R . D .

Salisbury, Geology: Processes and their Results, 1905) . These bergs carry a load of debris from the glacier and gradually strew their load upon the sea floor . They do not travel far before losing all stony and earthy debris, but glacial material found in dredgings shows that icebergs occasionally carry their load far from
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land . The structure of the iceberg varies with its origin and is always that of the glacier or ice-sheet from which it was broken . The breaking off of the ice-sheet from a Greenland glacier is called locally the " calving " of the glacier . The constantly renewed material from which the icebergs are formed is brought down by the motion of the glacier . The ice-sheet cracks at the end, and masses break off, owing to the upward pressure of the water upon the lighter ice which is pushed into it . This is accomplished with considerable 'iolence . The disintegration of an Arctic ice-sheet is a simpler
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matter, as the ice is already floating .

End of Article: ICEBERG (from ice and Berg, Ger. for hill, mountain)
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