How much ice have you seen in one place? An ice tray full, a skating rink full or a river frozen from bank to bank? Maybe a snow covered mountain. That's a mighty lot of ice. There are places in the world where the amount of ice is astonishing!!
We know about an incredible amount of mountains. There are places where the space between mountains is crammed, jammed and packed full of ice. This kind of ice is a glacier.
Glaciers are the jewels that adorn mountains. Sometimes they are as blue as sapphires. When the sun shines on them, they look like gold. At sunset they may look Ruby red. By starlight they're all diamonds and silver.
Year after year as the snow falls, it grows so deep that the snow at the bottom is crushed so much by the weight of the snow on top, another way of making ice!
In summer some of the snow on top is melted by the sun. The melted snow sinks down mixing with the snow at the bottom and freezing it.
This packing and pressing and freezing carries on until the whole mountain valley is solid ice - a glacier! Then the glacier starts moving.
You might say that a glacier is a river of ice moving between the mountains. Movement is very slow. One can't even see it.
It scrapes the sides of mountains as it moves tearing off chunks of rocks as big as houses.
Big rocks, little ones, sand and clay are all scooped up by the moving ice.
As the glacier moves down the mountain into warmer weather, the ice begins to melt. The icy water rushes into streams. The glacier also breaks off plunging into the water. The glacier which was once a river of ice, becomes floating islands of ice.
These giant floating pieces of the glacier have developed into mighty icebergs.
Such which sank the Titanic and during the ages the captains of ships had to be so careful and observant.
Ice breakers have helped shipping in those areas.
So much to learn about the Earth and mother nature !!
Sources - Readers Digest Encyclopedia, All images are free for commercial use from Pixabay
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