Ice floes on the Black Sea are scraping past each other, creating weird noises. If you couldn’t see the video, what would you guess is making the sound?

-via The Presurfer

This picture was taken yesterday in Mirabel, Quebec. There was some discussion of its location at reddit, where we are assured that in France, stop signs say “Stop” instead of “Arret.” Link -via reddit

(Image credit: benim ergani)

Image: Ivan Meljac

Where else but Iceland would you expect to find big chunks of ice on the beach, instead of sand? Behold the (brr!) beautiful beach of Jökulsárlón as photographed by French photographer Ivan Meljac, and featured in Quiet Moments in Iceland's Landscapes by Fotopedia.

Have you figured out yet what’s weird about this video? Everything is upside down! The fishermen are standing on the underside of the ice, “weighed down” by buoyant suits that have air in them. Notice how their air bubbles “sink.” -via Geekosystem

There are so many things wrong with this scene. People who live in climates where they might encounter ice occasionally should learn a few commonsense skills.

1. Don’t use ice-covered steps if there is any alternative route.
2. If they are your steps, use salt or other chemicals to melt the ice. If it’s too cold, you can use sand or ashes or maybe even block access.
3. Use the handrail. That’s what it is for.
4. Watch where you are going.
5. Take your hands out of your pockets. You may need them to regain balance or break a fall.

-via Arbroath

The Eisriesenwelt is an enormous cave system south of Salzburg, Austria. It’s forty-two kilometers long, the first kilometer of which is covered in wondrous ice formations. The cave is open to visitors during the summer, so visit if you’re in the area. Check out more pictures at the link.

Link -via American Digest | Official Website | Photo: Eisriesenwelt GmbH

No, the room heater isn’t broken. It’s just that cold. Every year, the Hôtel de Glace is erected in Quebec City, Quebec out of 500,000 tons of ice and 15,000 tons of snow. It includes up to thirty-six rooms that guests can rent as well as a combination dining room and chapel.

Link -via My Modern Met | Official Website | Photo: Luc Rousseau

Ridiculous? Yes. Eye-catching? Certainly! This ad is for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. -via the Presurfer

Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray – $9.95

Do you fear that your Thanksgiving meal is doomed? Don’t surrender to the dark side. Use the force and the Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray from the NeatoShop to distract your guests from your terrible cooking.

The Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray is made from food-safe silicone. Do or do not make other things in this Ice Tray. Mmm. Make Han Solo in Carbonite butter patties, I will.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Star Wars and cool Ice Trays.

Link

Chill Pills Ice Tray – $7.95

Is the summer heat starting to get to you? Chill out with the Chill Pills Ice Tray from the NeatoShop.  Forcing yourself to calm down and relax has never been so refreshing.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more cool Ice Trays!

Link

Cool Shooters Ice Tray – $7.95

Are you looking for a great way to beat the heat? You need the Cool Shooters Ice Tray from the NeatoShop.  This fabulous ice tray makes 4 picardie-style shot glasses.

The Cool Shooters Ice Tray is perfect for your next hot summer party.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more cool Ice Trays.

Link

The Beatles Yellow Submarine Ice Cube Tray – $10.95

After much crying, waiting, and hoping summer is finally here.  Are you planning your next backyard come together?  Why not make it Beatles themed!  All you need is love and  The Beatles Yellow Submarine Ice Cube Tray from the NeatoShop to throw a fantastic party.

Be sure to check out all the awesome Ice Trays available at the NeatoShop.

Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Jau Kay Kiang)

In 1805, two wealthy brothers from Boston were at a family picnic, enjoying the rare luxuries of cold beverages and ice cream. They joked about how their chilled refreshments would be the envy of all the colonists sweating in the West Indies. It was a passing remark, but it stuck with one of the brothers. His name was Frederic Tudor, and 30 years later, he would ship nearly 200 tons of ice halfway around the globe to become the “Ice King.”

Ice Man Cometh

Nothing in Tudor’s early years indicated that he would invent an industry. He had the pedigree to attend Harvard but dropped out of school at the age of 13. After loafing for a few years, he retired to his family’s country estate to hunt, fish, and play at farming. When his brother, William, quipped that they should harvest ice from the estate’s pond and sell it in the West Indies, Frederic took the notion seriously. After all, he had little else to do.

Frederic convinced William to join him in a scheme to ship ice from New England to the Caribbean. Tudor reasoned that once people tried it, they’d never want to live without it. During the next six months, the brothers pooled their money and laid out plans to ship their product to the French island of Martinique, where they hoped to create a monopoly on ice.

No one believed the idea would work. In fact, no ship in Boston would agree to transport the unusual cargo, so Frederic spent nearly $5,000 (a big chunk of the seed money) buying a ship of his own. On February 10, 1806, The Boston Gazette reported, “No joke. A vessel with a cargo of 80 tons of ice has cleared out from this port for Martinique. We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation.”

It did. Although the ice arrived in Martinique in perfect condition, no one wanted to buy it. Tudor desperately explained how the cold blocks of ice could be used in the stifling Caribbean heat, but islanders weren’t convinced.

After an inauspicious start, William pulled out of the partnership. The following winter, Frederic was on his own. Remarkably, he drummed up enough money to send another shipment of ice to the Indies. But when a trade embargo left much of the Caribbean off limits for two years, Frederic was left twiddling his thumbs. Meanwhile, the Tudor family fortune had dwindled in a shady real estate deal in South Boston.

Despite financial woes, Frederic persisted, and his ice business finally turned a profit in 1810. But a series of circumstances—including war, weather, and relatives needing bailouts—kept him from staying in the black for too long. Between 1809 and 1813, he landed in debtors’ prison three times and spent the rest of the time hiding from the sheriff.

Breaking the Ice

Perhaps it was his Yankee entrepreneurial spirit, or perhaps monomania, but Tudor was obsessed with the idea that ice would make him rich. During the next decade, he developed clever new techniques to convince people that they actually needed ice, including a “first one’s free” pitch. While living in a South Carolina boarding house in 1819, Tudor made a habit of bringing a cooler of chilled beverages to the dinner table. His fellow boarders always scoffed at the sight, but after a sip or two, they’d inevitably fall in love with his ice. Tudor traveled around the country and convinced barkeeps to offer chilled drinks at the same price as regular drinks—to see which would become more popular. He also taught restaurants how to make ice cream, and reached out to doctors and hospitals to convince them that ice was the perfect way to cool feverish patients. The truth is that people never knew they needed ice until Tudor made them try it. Once they did, they couldn’t live without it.

By 1821, Tudor’s business was strengthening. He’d created real demand for his product in Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, and even Havana. But he still needed to refine his operation. Enter Nathaniel Wyeth, an innovator who became Tudor’s foreman in 1826. By using a horse-drawn plow to cut the ice into large grids, Wyeth invented a much faster harvesting method. He also put an assembly process into place. Laborers sawed the blocks apart and plunked them into canals to float them downstream. Then a conveyor belt would hoist the blocks from the water and carry them up to icehouses, where they’d be stacked up to 80 feet high.

Still, only one-tenth of the ice harvested made it to sale. What’s worse, the whole operation was incredibly unsafe. In addition to those towering stacks of ice, numb hands, sharp instruments, and frigid waters made the process dangerous. The 300-lb. blocks of ice could slide easily, knocking down men and breaking their limbs. Ice harvesters often developed “ice man’s knees,” which were bruised and bloody from days of shoving solid ice.

Despite these drawbacks, Wyeth’s ingenious methods were a major improvement on prior harvesting practices. With the inventor by his side, Tudor asserted his long-fomenting monopoly and became known as the “Ice King.” Tudor’s reputation solidified in 1833 when he shipped 180 tons of ice halfway across the world to British colonists in Calcutta. The venture was so successful that it reopened trade routes between India and Boston.

Back at home, Tudor continued to dominate the scene. By 1847, nearly 52,000 tons of ice traveled by ship or train to 28 cities across the United States. Nearly half the ice came from Boston, and most of that was Tudor’s. He also maintained ice-harvesting rights to key ponds throughout Massachusetts. Even Henry David Thoreau watched Tudor’s workers harvest Walden Pond and waxed philosophic about the scene in his diary: “The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”

The End of the Ice Age

Frederic Tudor died in 1864, finally rich again. By that time, everyone with access to a frozen body of water was in on the action. Ice boomtowns sprouted along the Kennebec River in Maine, where farmers found year-round employment. The 1860s became the peak competitive period of American ice harvesting, and Tudor’s company prospered. Even during the Civil War, when the South was cut off from ice supplies in the North, the ice industry continued to grow in New England and in the Midwest.

As American society grew more accustomed to fresh meats, milk, and fruit, the ice industry expanded into one of the most powerful industries in the nation. At the turn of the 20th century, nearly every family, grocer, and barkeep in America had an icebox. But ironically, America’s dependence on ice created the very technology that would lead to the decline of the ice empire—electric freezers and refrigerators. During the early 1900s, these appliances became more reliable, and by 1940, 5 million units had been sold. With freezers allowing people to make ice at home, there was little need to ship massive quantities across the country.

Today, the ice industry pulls in $2.5 billion a year, but it’s nowhere near as dominant as it used to be. Most of the business is from pre-packaged, direct-to-consumer ice (the stuff you buy for your beer cooler). Still, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be grateful. The next time you put your lips to a slushie, or an iced tea, or a chilled martini, or a cold beer on a hot day, take a moment to thank the crazy Yankee who had the vision to turn water into money.

_______________________

The article above, written by Linda Rodriguez, is reprinted with permission from the November-December 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

Who knew invasive plant species could be so gorgeous? Artist Nicole Dextras scoured her backyard (and her neighbors’) for wearable weeds to comment on environmental issues in the fashion industry, such as the need for sustainable materials. This prom dress was made from Yucca plants found in her neighbor’s backyard. Dextras said she was stunned to find that her neighbor found the plants to be a nuisance.

Nicole’s ice typography is pretty amazing too.

Link via Yahoo!

“She’s not just a dog,” Tatiyana Balashova told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “She’s not a pure bred, but she’s still very special.”

Balashova who usually feeds stray dogs in Krasnoyarsk was the person who reacted to Naida’s alert.

“I heard Naida barking on the pond bank, like she was calling for help. She saw me, ran up, looked at me and ran back to the pond…”

Balashova quickly realised that a child had fallen into the water and rushed to find help from utility service workers, who were luckily close at hand.

“Because of the fact the boy was taken out of water pretty quickly and due to medics’ professionalism, this story had a happy end for Andrei, without any serious consequences,” Vladimir Fokin, the chief doctor at the hospital Andrei was admitted to, told KP.

Andrei spent a few days in the hospital recovering, and is now in satisfactory health. Naida has been adopted by a family that lives 500 km away. The canine adoption was arranged before the near-drowning incident, and the new owners are particularly proud of Naida’s heroism. Link -via Arbroath

Gourmet ice, often heavily filtered and hand-cut to guarantee the optimal amount of dilution, has officially become part of cocktail culture. Sasha Petraske, who in 2000 reinvigorated the New York bar scene with his speakeasy Milk & Honey, is considered by many to be the father of designer ice in the U.S. Since then, bars around the country, from Bar Agricole in San Francisco to Philadelphia’s Franklin Mortgage Investment Company, have followed suit, creating cocktails that feature market-fresh ingredients, small-batch bitters, and large blocks of beautiful ice.

Link via Althouse | Photo by Flickr user Kyle May used under Creative Commons license

Street art made possible by snow, with just a few seconds of eerie animation, inspired by a drain grate. The artist is Cem Ulucan. -via Laughing Squid

A volcano in Antarctica called Erebus is home to a network of ice caves. Hot gasses from the volcano carves through the thick ice to leave channels where ice crystals then grow. Dr. Kayla Iacovino wrote about visiting one of them called Warren Cave, and included more photographs. Link -via The Dystenium Science Daily

Previously: Ice Fumarole in Antarctica

Brrr! Is it cold where you are? Well, probably not as cold as inside this Ohio Lighthouse on Lake Erie, which is covered in ice.

Melissa Bell of The Washington Post’s blogPOST has more: Link

Researchers at Nokia’s laboratory in Tampere, Finland, developed a touchscreen interface that can be used on blocks of ice:

A near-infrared light source mounted behind the “screen” bathes it in invisible light, and an array of near-infrared cameras, also behind the wall, are focused on the front surface. A hand placed on the ice reflects the light towards the camera array and the signal each camera receives helps a nearby PC establish the hand’s position, size and motion. The PC is also connected to a projector, which uses the data to project imagery – such as flames – beneath the user’s hand.

Link (registration required) via DVICE

Previously: Water-Based Touchscreen

Cool Shooters Ice Tray - $7.95

Phew! Is it hot here or what? The country may be baking under the hot sun, but you can keep your cool with these awesome ice trays from the NeatoShop. Best of all, most of them are under $10: Link

Stone Cold Ice Tray	Bone Chillers Ice Tray	Gin and Titonic Ice Tray
Cool Jazz Ice Tray	Cool Beans Ice Tray	Cool Jewels Ice Tray

In as odd phenomenon at Yosemite Falls, the mist generated from the waterfall forms ice in the upper, cooler atmosphere at night and falls with the water making a slushy mixture called frazil ice. This slush causes some dynamic changes in Yosemite creek mimiking lava flows in that it flows, blocks up, and then spreads around. Nature is such a beautiful and mysterious thing.

- via wimp

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sshuggi.

What do mad scientists use to chill their beverage? Now you can make your own diabolical ice brain (or is it brain ice?) with the Brain Freeze Ice Tray from the NeatoShop: Link | More wonderful and unusual ice trays

In the asteroid belt lies a 125 mile wide hunk of rock called 24-Themis that is covered in ice and organic material. Scientists discovered this by analyzing the reflected sunlight and finding that it is consistent with the properties of water and various other organic materials.
 

Finding ice on the surface of the asteroid was a surprise because it would have been expected to evaporate quickly.

‘This implies that ice is quite abundant in the interior of 24 Themis and perhaps many other asteroids,’ Dr Emery added.

‘This ice on asteroids may be the answer to the puzzle of where Earth’s water came from.’

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sshuggi.

Thousands of people filled the churches to attend special services. They prayed for the falls to start flowing and the world to continue, or for salvation and forgiveness of their sins as the Last Judgment approached.

No one knew why the falls had stopped. The telegraph was still a new invention. Railroads served towns on both sides of the river, but the tracks were unreliable, and Buffalo — the nearest big city — was three hours away even when the trains ran on schedule.

But it was from Buffalo that word eventually arrived that explained the bare falls and dry riverbed. A strong southwest gale winds had pushed a huge chunks of lake ice to the extreme northeastern tip of Lake Erie, blocking the lake’s outlet into the head of the Niagara River. The ice jam had become an ice dam.

On the evening of March 31st, a great wall of water flowed down the riverbed and things were back to normal. Link

Hair ice, also called silk frost, is a type of ice formation that looks like silk and seems to only appear on woody, barkless materials on the ground. The ice structures tend to grow out of a small pore in the wood, sort of like hairs on the human head. Dr. James Carter has more on the phenomenon (and more photos too) on his site.

Link

The Big Picture has a bunch of beautiful pictures of this year’s International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in Harbin, China. Buildings made of ice blocks are illuminated both inside and outside, creating a magical effect.

Link

(image credit: REUTERS/Aly Song)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by tsevenut.

Photo: Katie Paterson

This is popping up everywhere, and it’s pretty neat.  Katie Paterson is an artist who recorded natural sounds from Iceland’s glaciers, then collected natural ice melt from the glaciers.  She then pressed three records made of the refrozen ice with the audio transferred.  It took each record two hours of continuous play to melt, but you can hear a sample of what it sounded like here.  via todayandtomorrow

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/06/glacier-audio-records-made-from-glacier-ice/feed/ 4 http://www.neatorama.com/2009/10/29/flammable-ice/ http://www.neatorama.com/2009/10/29/flammable-ice/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:47:02 +0000 John Farrier http://www.neatorama.com/2009/10/29/flammable-ice/

High school science teacher “Mr. Kent” has a YouTube channel full of neat chemistry demonstration videos. In this one, he sets ice on fire. Here’s how:

Ice is added to a dry Pyrex bowl. When the Ice melts the water reacts with the calcium carbide (place on the bottom) to produce acetylene gas and calcium hydroxide. The acetylene gas then explodes into flames when a match is place on top. It will continue to burn even as the ice melts because it keeps producing acetylene until the calcium carbide runs out.

via Urlesque | Mr. Kent’s Chemistry Page | YouTube Channel

[YouTube - Link]

Last year we had posted a really cool time lapse video “The Southern Lights” filmed by Anthony Powell who works at a base in Antarctica which really wowed us all. Now allow me to present to you folks another time lapse video which is just a sample of a larger video that Anthony and his wife Christine (who also lives in Antarctica) are working upon together.

Time-lapse video filmed in Antarctica, in and around McMurdo Station and Scott Base. Each year the sun is below the horizon for 4 months in the middle of winter, and above the horizon for 4 months in summer. During the couple of months in between we have more-or-less normal days.

Includes shots of auroras and the very rare polar stratospheric nacreous clouds, which form when ozone depleting gases crystallize in the upper atmosphere in the intense cold.
Summer population is about 1200 people, winter about 200.

This is just a small sample of an ongoing project to collect time-lapse imagery of Antarctica. I have taken over 1,000,000 individual photos and worn out a number of cameras that make up the collection of footage I have gathered so far over the last 6 years.

Anthony’s Pictures and Video Clips – “Antarctic Images”
His blog regarding life in Antarctica which is very interesting! – “Frozen South“

Two firefighters in dry suits pushed an ice rescue sled over about 10 feet of hip-deep water and 10 feet of ice to reach Duke, who was shivering and occasionally whining.

After trying to free the tail with water and a crowbar-like Haligan tool, firefighter Brandon Fleury broke the ice around Duke’s tail with a mallet while firefighter Ben Jares held onto the dog by his collar.

They got the shivering animal onto the sled and were hauled back to shore by seven other firefighters who had arrived.

It took four firefighters – one just to hold up the tail with the large chunk of ice attached – to lift the 118-pound dog into a waiting golf cart.

Duke was OK after the staff at an animal hospital removed the ice. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Casey Riffe/Gazette)

Maybe it’s just because I live in sunny Southern California and never actually see snow, but it truly fascinates me. Even if you’ve had your lifetime share of cold weather though, you’ll still probably love these photos of frost, snow and ice. Plus, if you actually read the text, you just might learn something new.

Link

December 15, 2008, South Waterfront neighborhood, Portland, Oregon. Looking from our condo we can see cars attempting, and most failing, to climb up a hill to get out of the neighborhood. I decided to put together a montage of sliding cars. Portland had a recent snowfall and we are expecting more tomorrow.

Might I add kudos for the excellent choice of theme music. -via Bits and Pieces

Large chunks of ice fall from an antenna during the Oklahoma ice storm. Look at the end of the clip and see the damage it made to someone’s vehicle.

Source: Youtube