Of the Causes of the Transformation of Condensed Snow Into Transparent Ice
It is a well-known fact that water rapidly frozen retains all the air it held in solution, and is opaque.
It is also known that water freezing very slowly is transparent.
Whenever, by the melting of the lower portion of any part of a glacier, a piece of it cracks and falls to a lower level, the friction of the broken sides will produce heat, and melt a small portion of water. This water, trickling down very slowly, will form a thin layer on the broken surface, and a portion will be retained in the narrowest part of the crack. But, since the temperature of a glacier is very near the freezing point, that water will freeze very slowly. It will, therefore, become transparent ice, and will, as it were, solder together the two adjacent surfaces by a thin layer of transparent ice.
But the transparent ice is much stronger and more difficult to break than opaque ice; consequently, the next time the soldered fragments are again broken, they will not break in the strongest part, which is the transparent ice: but the next fracture will occur in the opaque ice, as it was at first.
Thus, by the continued breaking and falling downward of the fragments of the glacier, as it proceeds down the valley, a series of vertical, rudely-parallel veins of transparent ice will be formed. As these masses descend the valley, fresh vertical layers of transparent ice will be interposed between those already existing until the whole takes that beautiful transparent cerulean tint which we so frequently see at the lower termination of a glacier. Another effect of this vertical fracture at the surfaces of least resistance will be alternate vertical layers of opaque and transparent ice shading into each other. This would, in some of its stages, give a kind of ribboned appearance to the ice. Probably traces of it would still be exhibited even in the most transparent ice. Speaking roughly, this ribboned structure ought to be closer together the nearer the piece examined is to the end of the glacier. It ought also to be more apparent towards the centre of the glacier than towards the sides. The effect of this progress downward is to produce a very powerful friction between the masses of ice and the earth over which they are pushed, and, consequently, a continual accession to that stream of water which is found issuing from all glaciers.
The result of this continual breaking up is to cause all the water melted by the friction of the blocks of ice which is not retained in the interstices to fall towards the lowest part of the descending valley, and thus increase the stream, and so take away more and more of the support of the central part of the glacier. Hence the advance of the surface of the glacier will be much quicker towards its middle than near the sides.
The consequence of these actions is, that cracks in the ice will occur generally in planes perpendicular to its surface. The rain which falls upon the glacier, the water produced from its surface by the sun’s rays and by the effect of the temperature of the atmosphere, as well as the water produced by the friction of its descending fragments, will penetrate through these cracks, and be retained by capillary action on the surfaces, and still more where the distance of the adjacent surfaces is very small. The rest of this unfrozen water will reach the rocky bottom of the glacier, and give up some of its heat to the bed over which it passes, to be again employed in melting away the lowest support of the glacier ice. Although the temperature of the glacier should differ but by a very small quantity from that of the freezing point of water, yet these films will only freeze the more slowly, and therefore become more solid and transparent ice. Their very thinness will enable all the air to be more readily extricated by freezing.
The question of the regelation of pounded ice, if by that term is meant anything more than welding ice by heat, or of joining its parts by a process analogous to that which is called burning together two separate portions of a bronze statue, has always appeared to me unsatisfactory.
The process of “burning together” is as follows:—Two portions of a large statue, which have been cast separately, are placed in a trough of sand, with their corresponding ends near to each other. A channel is made in the sand, leading through the junction of the parts to be united.
A stream of melted bronze is now allowed to run out from the furnace through the channel between the contiguous ends which it is proposed to unite. The first effect of this is to heat the ends of the two fragments. After the stream of melted metal has continued sometime, the ends of those fragments themselves begin to melt. When a small quantity of each end is completely melted, the further flow of the melted metal is stopped, and as soon as the pool of melted metal connects, the two ends of the pieces to be united begins to consolidate: the whole is covered up with sand and allowed to cool gradually. When cold, the unnecessary metal is cut away, and the fragments are as perfectly united as if they had been originally cast in one piece.
The sudden consolidation, by physical force, of pounded ice or snow appears to me to arise from the first effect of the pressure producing heat, which melts a small portion into water, and brings the particles of ice or snow nearer to each other. The portion of water thus produced then, having its heat abstracted by the ice, connects the particles of the latter more firmly together by freezing.
If two flat surfaces of clear ice had a heated plate of metal put between them, two very thin layers of water would be formed between the ice and the heated plate. If the hot plate were suddenly withdrawn, and the two plates of ice pressed together, they would then be frozen together. This would be equivalent to welding. In all these cases the temperature of the ice must be a very little lower than the freezing-point. The more nearly it approached that point the slower the process of freezing would be, and therefore the more transparent the ice thus formed.
In the Exhibition of 1862 there were two different processes by which ice was produced in abundance, even in the heat of the Machinery Annex, in which they were placed.
In both the water was quickly converted into ice, and in both cases the ice was opaque.
In one of them the ice was produced in the shape of long hollow cylinders. These were quite opaque, and were piled up in stacks. The temperature of the place caused the ice to melt slowly; consequently, the interstices where the cylinders rested upon each other, received and retained a small portion of the water, which, trickling down, was detained by capillary attraction. Here it was very slowly frozen, and formed at the junction of the cylinders a thin film of transparent ice. This gradually increased as the upper cylinders of the ice melted away, and, after several hours’ exposure, I have seen clear transparent ice a quarter of an inch thick, where, at the commencement, there had not been even a trace of translucency.
On inquiring of the operator why the original cylinders were opaque, he told me, because they were frozen quickly. I then pointed out to him the small portions of transparent ice, which I have described, and asked him the cause. He immediately said, because they had been frozen slowly.
It appeared to be an axiom, derived from his own experience, that water quickly frozen is always opaque, and water slowly frozen always transparent. I pointed out this practical illustration to many of the friends I accompanied in their examination of the machinery of the Annex.
It would follow from this explanation, that glaciers on lofty mountains and in high latitudes may, by their own action, keep the surface of the earth on which they rest at a higher temperature than it would otherwise attain.