There's a great one moving through my head these days--and I would like to net in words that may explain that movement.

Glaciers--glaciated--and the words that are the verbs for the kind of slicing and heaving they do.

Anything you may throw into the big word pit of things glacial I sure would appreciate to help my imagination come to terms with this colossal movement. The after-effects, too, but especially that movement and what happens. Links welcome here...and many, many thanks for whatever you may dig up. (Proper nouns...anything here. Really. Anything.)

Best regards,
WW

here's some abstruse ones (and a joke):

firn [G] (also névé [F])
cirque [F] (also cwm [W])
randkluft [G]
rognon [F]
bergschrund [G]
moraine [F]

Then there was the guide who was explaining matters
to a group of tourists. "And these rock formations
were piled up by the glaciers," he said. " But where
are the glaciers?" asked an elderly woman. "They've
gone back, madam, to get some more rocks."

When I was a boy I often played on a large hill almost a hundred feet high shaped a bit like half of a football, with points to the north and to the south. It was the only large hill for miles in each direction. I did not know until recently that it was a "drumlin" meaning a place where something managed to resist the bulldozing action of the glacier, forcing the glacier to split and go around it on two sides.

Well, there are always crevasses. Every glacier has some, the more obvious the better, obviously. Nanatuks are the tops of hills which have resisted the ice and are poking up above it. Dunno if that's any relation to Bill's drumlins.

But rather than bore you with my definitions of what they are and aren't, here's a link which should tell you everything you would ever want to know:

http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/glaciers/glossary/index.html

Thanks for the link, CK. It reminded me of chuckle I got when a woman added to description of property she wanted to sell that it contained an "esker path". A sly way trying to make a virtue out of fact much of the land was useless because of deep deposits coarse rounded gravel for which there was no demand.
This was material that had collected in a large crevasse, and eventually wound up in an irregular stream at bottom of the glacier fed by melt water. It is believed that the ice was a mile deep until it retreated about sixteen thousand years ago.
Interestingly, pollen studies have indicated that it retreated at about a quarter of a mile per year. No clue as to rate at which it had advanced.

Till, debris deposited by glaciers

If a glazier installs glass, does a glacier install glace? (Look it up in a French dictionary!)

How do different AWADers pronounce glacier? With a sh sound in the middle (glaysher), or glas (short a)- ier? Or something else?

Bingley

glaysher

Glaysiated v. Glayshiated?

The "sh" is a more cutting sound--there's more push in it--more of a shovel in it--than in the "s," a weak sibilant here at best.

Shoving off,
Wordwind

"sh" is a more cutting sound

You gotta be kidding. "Sh" is a sound you use to put a baby to sleep. "Ssssss" is the sound of a canoe sliding down a glacier almost carrying you across the road and sending you to certain death in the valley below, littered with glacial pebbles the size of houses but so far away they look like pebbles.

Faldage, if you can't feel the force of the "sh" in push, then your imagination is turned off.

This is a matter of dynamics and delivery:

"Sh's" a lot of things--a lot of forces--"sh" at pianissimo is just right for that babe in arms--but, give it a fortissimo--and you've got the force of football--push 'em back, push 'em back, way back!--and at 10,000 times fortissimo, you've got your glacier pushing, too. Glaysher, that is.

However, all that said, I liked a great deal what you wrote about that canoe, though it's no glacier.

Best regards,
Wordwind

I pronounce glacier "glaa-seer". But then I'm Zildian.

Dear CK: I remember very clearly a TV series David Attenbury presented on PBS twenty years ago, in which he pronounced the big ice sheet word as "glasher" as in basher dasher, lasher, masher. Wonderful series, amazing guy.

I remember very clearly a TV series David Attenbury presented on PBS twenty years ago, in which he pronounced the big ice sheet word as "glasher" as in basher dasher, lasher, masher. Wonderful series, amazing guy.

Didn't know that David Attenborough had such good competition! Attenborough and I pronounce the word "glacier" the same way.

One more glacier word. When the ice sheet forced medium sized stones to slide across large areas of stone that could not move, deep scratches were left in the stone surfaces on the bottom. These scratches are called "striae", and show the direction in which the ice sheet was moving.

Dear CK: Joke on me. I searched for "David Attenbury" because I was not sure of spelling, and got a thing about "birds" and wrongly surmised it was the BBC TV marvel David Attenborough. But I do remember very clearly how he pronounced the word: glasher. I say again, marvelous series, admirable man.

the force of the "sh" in push

It's the pop of the p in push that gives it the force. The sh is the sound of it shlooshing to a stop like someone silly enough to think that it's a neat idea to put on 30 lbs of equipment so that he won't know he's been hurt when someone 50 lbs heavier than he has popped him back.

It's the pop of the p in push that gives it the force. The sh is the sound of it shlooshing to a stop like someone silly enough to think that it's a neat idea to put on 30 lbs of equipment so that he won't know he's been hurt when someone 50 lbs heavier than he has popped him back.
Bolding deliberately left out. I couldn't be bothered.

Are you saying that "push" is exclusive to American sports?

This thread is starting to sound suspiciously like the stotting thread with a heavy sports patina. Shall we go for the hat trick, Helen, and make it a food thread?

Well, Consuelo, there's the sh in shish kebab--and there's a push in that, too.

And, Faldage, it's not just the p in push--there the "uh" and the follow up thrust in the "sh."

Besides, there's also shove. There's push and thrust in that, too.

I just can't accept that "sh" is reserved for calming babies.

Hushed for a while,
Wordwish and wishes can be pretty powerful forces matching the movement of certain glayshers

The best thing for calming babies is a bust in the mouth.

The best thing for calming babies is a bust in the mouth.

Now Dr. Bill,

Must we go there again?

Angel

Dear Angel: That is one of the truly most beautiful things in life. No ribaldry in that comment.

For me, in glacier the sh always had a touch of a "z" lanced into it...almost like glazier, but not quite. Perhaps closer to the mid-consonant sound in brassiere...which, in the etymology of its other form, brasserie, has: OF bracier! where's that booby emoticon when you need it?

And in glacial the sh always a bit softer...gla-shul.

the mid-consonant sound in brassiere
Is that what you think is in brassiere? [ for you]

> How do different AWADers pronounce glacier?

glay - see - ya

Post Edit: and glay - see - yull (as in full)

stales

dubdub - I hope you reach the pot of gold with your mental matters glacial - read on....

One of the principal methods of finding ore bodies in Canada (and elsewhere I presume) is by drilling into the "boulder trains" left by glaciers and subsequently buried by sediments. The trains are located by various geophysical means such as gravity, magnetic or radiometric surveys and drilled into. If the glacier originated or passed through a mineral rich area, the chunks of rock torn off and transported down flow will contain anomalous traces of the mineral the company is seeking. Follow the anomalies up flow until they stop and you're standing on top of an ore body!!

Sort of like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumb path.

stales

Dear Stales,

What you've provided here is gold indeed. Many thanks for your post--I think that train is just the one I need to catch to work what I need to work.

Best regards,
DubDub

That is one of the truly most beautiful things in life.

[embarrassed-e] I agree.

dubdub

Further to the previous post re boulder trains ("tills"), the following URL may be of some interest. It's an academic paper and as such the jargon is full on - but there are some pretty pictures of many of the features associated with glaciers that've been mentioned here. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to read it.

http://www.em.gov.bc.ca/DL/GSBPubs/GeoFldWk/1998/paulen.pdf

stales

I'm with stales on this one. Which is not really a huge surprise as he lives just up the road.

Wow, stales--have we hit on another culture variation in names for the same thing? Tills, I've heard of, but thought train must be something new to me. Is that term unique to Oz, do you know? Or is till, to here? (I also just realized how little it would take to make this post very surreal...)

> "...thought train must be something new to me"

Not sure where you're going on this one Jackie - perhaps my thought train is coming off the tracks?

Unless they remember their high school geology, most Aussies probably wouldn't know what a till (in the geological sense) is. The most common use of the word here would be as an alternative for "cash register". (Begs the question, why DO we call it a till?)

As for trains of thought, I think we all have those, irrespective of where we live. My problems are that there's far more tracks leading out of my own Grand Central Station than there are stations and there's no map of the network. Consequently many of the trains that depart never get to where they are supposed to, some arrive well after their scheduled ETA and others just crash into each other. I recently sacked the Fat Controller and took over his job, but have yet to fully establish the situation in the marshalling yards.

stales

Not sure where you're going on this one Jackie
I'm sorry, Darlin'. Instead of "but thought train must be something new to me", I should have written: but I thought that the word train must be describing something new to me. Man--I said it would take very little to make that post surreal!

And, I thought at first reading, that the end of YOUR post was surreal, but finally caught on. Can you give my Fat Controller some lessons, please? And maybe a map of my destinations?

New England was covered with rounded stones when the first settlers got here. In some places there was hardly enough room to put feet down between them. I have seen areas that were never cultivated because there were just too many of them. I have a mental video of the ice slowly moving forward like a colossal bulldozer, rolling the jagged stones over as it passed over them, then the ice retreating perhaps a quarter of a mile in summer, then advancing a half mile in winter, rolling the stones over again and again, until the sharp edges were gone. I sure would like to see a diagram of how the geologists picture that action.

dr. bill, CK's site gives a different definittion of drumlin: teardrop shaped landforms are created largely from glacial till,, that is, from heterogenous glacial drift material.

Dear Keiva: The drumlin I played on was made of till, to be sure. But it was far higher and more massive than the majority made by till falling into a crevasse. There appeared to be a rock formation that parted the oncoming glacier. allowing the till to be deposited in the empty "V" behind it. In a few places in New England there are remnants of volcanic activity and other magma extrusions that might have made the drumlin I described.

Also the opportunistic Presidential advisor in Carl Sagan's magnificent sci-fi story "Contact".

Cheers,
Bryan

Drumlins aside, even though this is where we've gone, I'm trying to picture things geological in my poor confused mind.

The glacier is ice, right? And let's go ahead and start at the beginning.

There's the Ice Age. And then there's some melting, right? And the great ice thing--the glacier--begins to move at the pull of gravity because of the melting. And, according to what Geoff has told me, there's a tremendous amount of water being melted, so this great ice thing is preceded by all this great rushing of water that washes out all kinds of things in its path, right?

So, you've got great rushing of waters beyond anything Hollywood has yet to capture, and you have this monolithic huge chunk of ice (the glacier) that follows the water and it carves what the water hasn't already taken out.

Is this, at this point in geology, what is happening? Great cutting down and about by water, and then even more intense cutting out by the glacier?

A single "yes" will set my heart at ease, drumlins and tills and all the other terms aside for the moment.

Best regards,
WordWonderer

I'm no geological expert, but I don't think there's much liquid water involved in the moving forward of the glacier. It slides down the mountains and then once it gets warm enough it starts to melt. The melting causes it to recede. It's not actually moving back, the front is just melting off. When the glacier forms rocks get stuck inside it and when it melts the rocks stay where they are. I believe a hill made of glacier debris is called a terminal moraine. Moraine, Ohio is named after this.

The glacier builds up from a great deposit of snow winter after winter,until it can be over a mile deep, with minimal summer melting. When it becomes over a hundred feet deep, the ice at the bottom cannot stay rigid any longer. As if it were wax in a warm room it begins to spread out, becoming less deep. As it spreada out, fissures develop into crevasses. In summer melting puts water into crevasses, and there may be outwash from the southern margin. The Finger Lakes in New York were created by massive melting behind a dam-like formation. Out West not far below the Border, a tremedous lake formed, until it was truly huge. When it finally overflowed the obstruction, it caused enormous erosion - a miniature Grand Canyon. Get stales to tell you about it.

It's only at the end of the Ice Age that we get the great floods - as the glaciers begin to thaw, refreeze, then thaw again, and ice dams break from time to time.

NYC is located at the souther edge of the last glacier to come this way. the giant ice sheet, advanced, and pushed before it, loose rocks and dirts, the same way a push brooms does. as it came to NY, is ground to a halt, and stopped. slowly, it receded, and melted. the land below was compressed and sunken as a result of the weight of the glacier. the ridge of rocks, sand, and dirt, (a moraine, and in this case, a terminal moraine, since it marks the end point of travel) acted as a dam for the melt water. a giant lake began to form. the weight of the melt water helped keep the land compressed. for several thousand years, the water melted, the lake grew, until finally, a weak point in the moraine failed. Today, this weak point is called "The Narrows"-- and it is the site of the Verranzano Narrows bridge, which marks the entrance into NY Harbor. on the brooklyn side, you have Bay Ridge, named for the characterist high rigde of land (the moraine!) on the Staten Island side, you can actally see the sheared moraine!

with the dam broken, the water poured out of the glacial lake. and slowley the land emerged. but technically, the Hudson river is a fjord-- a sunken river. the old river bed is several hundred feet below the surface. (how ever, the river has silted up, and the silt is hundreds of feet deep, and the Harbor nowdays required dredging to keep a deepwater channel open.) but at Bear mountain (a hours drive, and a state park,) the river is narrow, and runs swiftly, and the water is 265 feet deep, and the surface is about 100 feet below ground level, in a gorge. Even in NYC, the side of the Hudson are (starting at about 23rd street in Manhattan, but on the NJ side, and at 150th Street Manhattan side) high cliffs. the area in NJ is know as Palisades-- since it resembled one. (and some of us old folk remember the pop hit of the early 60's Palisade's Park, for an amusement park there)

the NY area still has pleanty of Kills-- a dutch word for meadow, marshy remnats of the old glacial lake Fresh Kills in Staten island is really a continuation of the NJ Meadowland-- home of a large sports complex. the same meadow continue (but in many places it has been "improved" out of existance!) to queens-- as "Fresh Meadows". Fresh Kills is now one of the highest point of land in NYC-- home to one of three "Mount Garbages" (the others being in Pelham (Bronx) and Flatbush (Brooklyn)) most of these areas are between the newest moraine, (North Hils Moraine,) and an older one--Ronkonkama Moraine.

All of Long Island is Moraine.. the fish shape, with the split tail at the east end, are remnants of the moraine. North Hills make the southern tail (Montawk Point, and crosses the Ronkonkama moraine in queens. it then runs diagonal through queens, to Brooklyn, and staten island.

any one who has flown into NYC, and gone to Manhattan, will have noticed that the trip to Manhattan is through a necropolis-- the moraines are not good farm land, and large parts of them became cemetaries.

i have take many local tours with geologists from AMNH http://www.amnh.org/ -- and learned many details about NY. i know the same glacial mass covered most of Michigan-- and formed gorges in upstate NY, (watkins glenn, etc). but mostly i know NYC geology.

Visiters to NY can see, in central park, the bedrock of Manhattan (schist) and in many places, it is scarred, and bears deep parallel groves, as if some giant claw dug in and gouged the rock. the "claw" was the last glaicer!

glacial erratica-- about all over the area. some even remain!

I haven't LIUed this, but wasn't Lake Missoula a giant drain-off from the shield glaciers over Canada which covered most of the north-western US? I remember hearing or reading that the lake was held back by an ice plug, and when that gave the lake emptied in a matter of a few days, scouring the bedrock through Washington State up to 200 feet deep on its way to the sea.

wasn't Lake Missoula a giant drain-off from the shield glaciers over Canada which
covered most of the north-western US?

Right, CK! The Columbia Gorge and much of the topography of Southern Washington/Northern Oregon is as a result of the Missoula Floods. Google on it and you'll get lots of info - ESPECIALLY you, Dub Dub!

Dear wwh,

You wrote:

When it becomes over a hundred feet deep, the ice at the bottom cannot stay rigid any longer.

Why not? Is the mystery of glacial movement tied into this 100-foot depth? Avalanches make a lot more sense than this. I was about to give up on glaciers till I went back and read what you wrote above.

Sorry to be so thick here, but the glacier in my mind must not be at 100 feet yet and, therefore, not ready to slide on out.

Best regards,
DubDub
PS: To Helen: What a profusion of facts you have in your head! Astonishing!

Dear WW: Water has many marvelous properties. You must have heard that skating is made possible by the fact that a lot of pressure over a small area covers the ice into a film of water that lubricates the movement of the skate runner. That plane Glacier Girl sank two hundred and fifty feet into Greenland ice in fifty years. And its area was so large that the pressure per square inch would have been far smaller than that under a skate runner. I would have expected ice to crush it to junk. Amazing that the ice must have filled up the inside fast enough to prevent crushing.

Although I've seen a glacier first hand for about 30 minutes of my life (the JungFrau in Switzerland), I think the following may tidy up some of the Q's going on here...

The primary force behind glaciers moving downhill is gravity.

Increased pressure on ice decreases its melting point, thus liquefying it at the pressure point IF there is sufficient pressure - the skating reference is very apt. It may well be that an ice sheet has to be 100' thick for this to happen - I don't know.

Consequently, a glacier's downhill velocity will not only be a function of the slope it's on, but also the thickness of the ice (and hence the volume of water/lubricant at its base. It's conceivable that the downhill velocity may change from season to season, but predominantly (and this is a wild guess) as a function of the amount of ice being deposited upon the head of the glacier - its nevee field. More ice on the nevee field, bigger push from the top, therefore greater velocity in winter????????? A counter argument would be that the toe of the glacier melts more in summer, therefore causing an imbalance between head and toe, and therefore a greater velocity in summer. Either way, there WOULD be a degree of backwards and forwards movement with the toe between the seasons - couple with increased meltwater at the toe druing summer. This will add to the erosion of the boulders in the morraine, but bear in mind they have already travelled many kilometres during which they were being constantly ground.

Ice itself is not hard enough to grind the rocks within the glacier or the mountains and valleys surrounding it. The carving is caused by rock acting upon rock - at all scales. The ice or meltwater carry the agents of abrasion into contact with each other and carry away the products. Nevertheless, sundry processes such as frost wedging would apply.

Another thing to think about is the sheer weight of great ice fields such as those in Antarctica and Greenlan. In both cases the ice is several kilometres thick and has thus downwarped the Earth's crust underlying it. As the ice melts (as one day it will - though we wont see it), the rock will rise up again - like when you poke a sponge cake then take your finger away.

I've gotta say I'm sceptical that the aircraft "sank" 250' into the ice. I'm sure it sank some, but I reckon 240' of snow and ice have fallen on it since it landed there 50 years ago. Happy to be wrong on this though!!

stales

Dear Stales: I never thought about the snow accumulation during the fifty years. But I think that the Greenland ice is not deepening five feet a year. At least not according to the global warming people. So maybe it's a question of "Halp zog sie ihn, halp sank er hin....."
Incidentally, I saw a very funny German etching of that. A big fat bimbo lying on a sofa, pulling a timid wimp down to her.

.Es lächelt der See, er ladet zum Bade - Friedrich Schiller ...
... Lieder. {1803} [AUS WILHELM TELL] 1. Fischerknabe Es lächelt der See, er ladet zum
Bade, Der Knabe schlief ein am grünen Gestade, Da hört er ein Klingen, Wie ...
http://members.tripod.de/spangenberg/gedichte/schiller/schil04k.html
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