ICEBERG (from ice and Berg, Ger. for hill, mountain)

This article appears in Volume V14, Page 227 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: I27-INV

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-

sheet

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

DRIFT (from "drive ")

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 water pouring from their pinnacles in the warmer air. When, however, they rest in comparatively warm water, melting takes place, most rapidly at the 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

Alaska

ALASKA

, and " advances into water, the depth of which approaches its thickness, the ends are broken off and the detached masses

float

FLOAT (in O. Eng. floc and flota, in the verbal form f eotan; the Teutonic root is flut-, another form of flu-, seen in " flow," cf. " fleet "; the root is seen in Gr. a-M e, to sail, Lat. pluere, to rain; the Lat, fluere and fluctus, wave, is not connect

away as icebergs. Many of the bergs are overturned, or at least tilted, as they set sail. If this does not happen at once it is likely to occur later as the result of the wave-cutting and melting which disturb their

equilibrium

EQUILIBRIUM (from the Lat. aequus, equal, and libra, a
balance
- BALANCE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. bilantia, an apparatus for weighing, from bi, two, and lanx, a dish or scale)
)

" (T. C. Chamberlin and R. D.

Salisbury

Geology

GEOLOGY (from Gr. yp7, the earth, and Abyor, science)

: 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 land. The structure of the iceberg varies with its origin and is always that of the glacier or ice-

sheet

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 matter, as the ice is already floating.

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