Science in Action: Rivers of Ice (ca 1956)

science in action science in action is produced by the West's older scientific institution the California Academy of Sciences now in its 100th year thank you you know it's a small world well that's an expression that many of us have used at various times but really The World Isn't So Small after all about let's see 57 million square miles but there was a time many years ago when the world was much smaller in so far as the land area was concerned because then we had a giant ice cap which covered much of the northern hemisphere about 28% of the land area was covered by ice now gradually that disappeared until at the present time we have about 10% of our land area which is covered by Ice as we see here now 2third of the ice is gone the only clues that we have as to the way in which this ice has worked is to be found in the study of the living glaciers of today and so to tell us of these rivers of ice we have invited as our special guest on science and action the famed Glacier priest who comes to us from the Department of geology at Santa Clair University California father Bernard hubard welcome to science and action father har thank you Dr Harold uh ice is a very cold subject but I find glaciers among the most fascinating things on Earth you know this is about as close as I've ever been to a glacier you know it it sort of has a a river effect or a flowing effect yes in more ways than one doctor that's the great kapach Glacier that I first studied in the Alps and it is a real River of Ice uh ice really follows practically all the laws of gravity the river does only it's slower what are the three types that we have now this uh we have the pedmont and the valley types yes now this is the valley uh type here and just imagine that it gets out to the uh foot of the mountain and it spreads out uh that's why it's called a pedmont glacier then PE and mons foot of the mountain that's a second type and then the third type we don't show here uh it's really an ice cap I see in Greenland and Antarctic those are the biggest ones today and then we have lesser ones in spitsbergen and Nova zembla Alaska banland and so on those are just huge areas that flooded with ice so to speak and here and there out of the Ice come a strange rock- like prominences called nun attx nun attx that would be a good word to remember let's see these prominences then that come out of the ice are the nun attacks uh yes doctor and they are just simply a a lifeless rock that comes up 2 and 3,000 ft sometimes well now if we started our study of Glacier with such things as ice crystals they look something like this snowflakes yes the beautiful little crystals that we're accustom to see and there beautiful hexagonals that's the beginning of the glacier because uh when ice Falls above Snow Line and you know snow line is actually the line above which ice is uh uh you find snow all year round in the equator it's uh uh way up in the highest mountains at the poles is almost down at sea level but that's where this movement of ice then begins to form what we call a glacier well then eventually of course it packs down until you have the flow started and then of course small boys know about such are snowballs well that's our snowball Carl and uh actually when a youngster goes through the through the uh process of making a snowball he goes through all the processes nature does making a glacier because actually these snow crystals they come together and Alternate melting and freezing together with their own pressure soon make a sort of a a mass something like Frozen uh sludge and then that uh starts in to just pour itself around whatever uh area it happens to be in suppose we make a synthetic Glacier with this River cut Gorge and we'll add our Glacier material at the top here and we'll watch it now as it flows down now this would be approximately would it what we would have very much so Carl you see this uh this v-shaped Valley represents a Terrain before a glacier or an ice cap has started to cover it and then pretty soon uh when this accumulation of snow comes to the to the condition where it starts moving then the glacier is born and it starts coursing down through this v-shaped mountain well suppose I add some color material right here put it in a straight line and we'll see the rate of speed with which it moves uh let's see the center is moving out a little bit faster yes you notice that right away that's why this is a very good example uh the there are two reasons for that Carl first of all uh the center is much higher in mass than the sides and that allows it to to sort of have a forward thrust and then the reason it's hardly moving at all on the sides here is because there is a sort of a frictional drag where you have the containing Mountain sides that are just simply pressed against the glacier that always allows us Center to move faster yes and I suppose you'd have these small glaciers here in the various side places running into the main Glacier there yes because presumably we just simply have a whole ice cap that's forming here and they carve out the little cirs and they they knock off the depressions and uh for that matter they're always a changing topography well suppose we look at a real Glacier as um you have visited these many times and see what it would look like as we watched it in motion uh this would be what now this is well right there we're looking at the beautiful m McKinley and the mro glacier is coming at us that's about 90 Mi long and it constitutes one of the uh longer uh uh glaciers in the whole world you see literally there are thousands of these smaller glaciers scattered around the world the Himalayas the Alps Alaska and elsewhere they're just as you see here huge bodies of ice that are really moving M well now what would be the rate of speed of that well that' be hard to judge because there's so many variables but uh actually uh every Glacier moves from a few inches to a few feet a day we seem to be the only things moving in the plane there but all this whole Mass here is moving and some glaciers in fact in Greenland they go around 30 or 40 or even 50 ft a day on account of the pitch and the weight on them how many glaciers would you estimate there are in the world oh they go up into so many thousands I don't think they've ever even been counted they're General uh generally they keep on going until they come down to uh levels where temperature offsets further Advance mhm and then they either start rivers or if they come into Seas or lakes they break off into Iceberg now we started with this first model in the very sharp sides and then as the glacier moves through it chews out material and eventually we end up with something like this uh yes there there's the typical u-shaped trough that is very characteristic of Glacier action that is this you would be right down here yeah and practically all the way along with steep sides particularly as you notice there m and here you have your mountains rounded off everything has been smooth and rounded off all the projecting Ridges of the first uh a table have now been smoothed which is the erosive effect of Glacier Ice well now as that Glacier moved down the valley of course it picked up things such as this and part of that scouring action I gather is due to this rough surface here uh that and particularly weight just like if you drop a a hunk of soap in the sand it gets all uh covered with sand and then let it dry and then try to wash your hands and you'll have the same effect that striations and and just about everything that you don't want well now these look as though they might have come from a stream bed but I GA that's not the case uh in this particular case they could have come from a steam bed but actually this one came from the menol glacier marine and this beautiful uh Stone here notice how polished and round it is and it's rather heavy well actually that was under this tremendous weight of thousands of tons of ice and it just couldn't move up or anything so it was just moved around and around scouring a sort of a glacier Mill in the Bedrock until finally we had this result well now one of the results of this uh uh glacier moving down is to make these scratch marks and I see some tremendous scratch marks here is that your jack knife that I see there in the middle of that one yes that gives you a little comparison in size Earl and those scratches simply indicate here that uh when the ice passed over that it had some rocks in suspension in the ice that were harder than the Bedrock so they scratched otherwise if they were softer you'd find that they'd simply uh pulverize themselves up into a sort of a dust which would be carried away from the glacier and stre in the in the central part of the United States I know we have some peculiar structures sort of hummocks and uh they are very very interesting uh perhaps you give us an idea with this model here just what's involved in those yes those hommocks we just were looking at were taken uh again in Alaska they call them in the Alps rash Mutan or sheep's backs and here's the way they occur you find some kind of a of an elevation in Bedrock the glacier comes to that and instead of diverting around it uh being rigid like ice it begins to climb over it and then the buffing action makes everything rounded off and then with a little imagination when you see a whole lot of them together uh they give the impression of sheep's backs that's why they got the name now you glacial geologists have some special words and one of them that we quite often see is this word morine so I'd like to point out just how that is spelled and perhaps with this glaciated Valley now you can give us an idea as to what a marine is uh with these small Pebbles here well first of all the substance of Marines are merely the rocks that have been chipped off from the sides of the containing uh Rock mountains let's say now a glacier's action is very much like a conveyor belt with rocks on it so when it go goes along let's say it stops here all right the the conveyor belt still pulls the Rocks along and the whole lot of it gathers up then let's say a recessional period comes the glacier moves back it scatters rocks all the way and then it's stationary again another one builds up oh yes and then in fact way you can have success successive ones where you don't have any ice at all today but that proves that ice was once there the terminal R and that would be an example now of such a thing as we see here uh yes uh th those would be uh uh that that in fact is a terminal Marine on one of the alen glaciers and it you see a terminal Marine does not have to be down in the bottom of a trough be hanging on as this one does on the side of a mountain now you can have marines that are along the side also so if we were to uh what drop some these Pebbles along here we'd have the same action yes but then you have to imagine this is a icy and then the ice always pulls away a little bit from the side of the containing rocks and when the Rocks fall down they're gathered right uh where the ice joins the Rock and then they're ground up and ground together and make scratches and powder and just disintegrate and that would be such a thing as we see here this uh this beautiful uh Marine on the side here there see on the left hand side as we look at it those are Marines that have been piled up very similar to the action of a bulldozer cuz a glacier doesn't just shrink all at once it oscillates a little bit up and down and keeps pushing up like a bulldozer all the time well now a glacier goes forward it drops this Marine this pile of rocks it comes back it could go forward and drop another one right on top of the old one and in fact that usually happens because we've had all kinds of oscillations even in the formation of the ice ages now in this particular case uh we're looking here at uh uh a terminal Marine on the menol glacier this uh uh this Marine uh uh was caused by the first Glacier there let's say and then the glacier moved back and a huge Forest grew up oh this looks like a pile of cannons yes because the stream that eroded that little trough there left them sticking out of the sides now another uh picture that we'll have of a closeup here uh shows the one of those particular stumps uh they were called preglacial stumps when I first went up there but I found that they were interglacial because that the uh Roots were Ground around uh that meaning they were entwined around marinal rocks so the Marine had to be there first and then the top of that picture you'll notice the shear action Because the actual movement of ice is not fluid but actually hexagonal Crystal over hexagonal Crystal yes well now uh one thing I'm let see we have been speaking of glaciers receding by that we don't necessarily mean that that they have been moving backward actually they are meling on the front end faster than they are being built up at the back end yes exactly Earl uh it's a case of where we can demonstrate that a little bit you see when evaporation uh exceeds precipitation uh then the although there's always a forward movement in the glacier yet there is a shrinking backwards now this is just a little piece of wax we had to make it awfully thin cuz that's the only way we could it work now I'm constantly pushing that forward notice constantly going forward and as you go forward then uh the same sort of thing that happens in it's still going forward but as it meets this heat notice my hand's getting closer and it's melting but it's always going forward yes when movement ceases in a glacier it's no longer a glacier one thing that I've been wondering about is how you can have enough heat in such places as the far north to uh melt these glaciers well Earl It Isn't So Much a question of heat as a question of time and actually in the summer time it does get reasonably hot up there well suppose we step over and look at these twin glaciers because that's something that I was admiring a little bit earlier normally this time would be devoted to your second commercial however I would like to use it now to tell you just a bit about the California Academy of Sciences the institution which produces science and action the academy is one of the oldest and most distinguished scientific organizations in the United States and we're quite proud of that fact the academy is dedicated to scientific research and public education in science now public education takes several forms here Dr Robert C Miller Academy director and noted marine biologist conducts a group of young people on an outing to study plant and animal life at the Ocean's Edge later through science and action they shared their experiences with thousands of others mysterious ways of a small crab or the magic of the distant planets may be equally fascinating when it was found impossible to procure a planetarium projector from the Zeiss company our Academy staff proceeded to design the only major planetarium that has ever been completely constructed within the United States here we are on the roof of the planetarium building but the instruments we see have nothing to do with the Stars as a service to the United States weather bureau Academy staff members keep regular records of various phases of the weather and that history and science museums in the steinhardt aquarium continue the public education program in still another way for example more than a million and a half visitors come to steinhardt aquarium every year to view the reptiles fish and marine animals which have been gathered from every part of the world here is a very rare cannibalistic South American horned frog of course washing down the back of green and Hawks Bill Turtles and scrubbing the back as well is quite important in preparing them for display the long-established reputation of the academy has earned us the cooperation of organizations in all fields of science here a great Hospital permitted us to film the administration of mrin an unprecedented effort to keep alive a baby unable to breathe later this became a part of one of the medical shows which form an important portion of any science and action series industry has been quite generous in sending us top scientists to tell the story of how science is applied to the products and services that we use every day now this ban extends from the comparatively new and dramatic synthetics industry to the old and still vitally important railroad business each series of Science and action is balanced to include subjects appealing to every taste the film that you are viewing covers only one Topic in one field the broad overall scope of the entire program appeals to all interest in science and to all ages incidentally there there is one thing I'd like to mention and that is the fact that the animal of the weak feature provides an excellent bridge for the middle commercial those uh those Rings there look much like U the sort of thing that you would see in the cross-section of a tree uh yes and I believe they cross the tree rings they're sort of chronological don't they yes well that would be the same effect here even uh you see off to the left where we uh we can't see in the picture there's a crack in the mountains and the winds that blow down from the big taco ice cap just pour debris and dust and uh pollen and little objects across the glacier and uh and uh when they're very similar to what you showed on the uh demonstration model yes and then the set are moving faster than the sides now in winter snow falls and no dust can blow so that's why you have those alternate bands of black and white that indicate seasonal changes but during the summertime the protective covering over the top of this dirt isn't sufficient to prevent the the ice from melting underneath no not unless it's a terrific covering or like a volcanic eruption or a landslide in fact uh small objects especially dark objects hasten uh the uh the melting of a yes you were mentioning this experiment you conducted with a piece of a leaf and a quarter I think it was oh yes uh actually I could have put a dollar on it would had the same effect but it didn't have a dollar in that time quarter did it uh you see the quarter is a metallic and right colored the leaf is uh is uh in fact it was a rotten Leaf too if you touched and Fall to Pieces was dark now light objects uh uh attract light and uh dark objects repel them oh yeah and so a dark object will work right down into the glacier several inches even though it's made of such a little Frable material as a leaf whereas the metallic coin stayed on top because it was light colored well how would you go about telling the temperature say on the inside of a glacier well that's a little bit more involved but we actually tried an experiment uh experiment once uh in lowering one of the uh young men that was of the party down into a glacier crass uh it was a rather risky thing to do but uh we felt though that uh we were taking no unreasonable chances after all you take a reasonable chance uh when you're crossing a city street with the light not against it that's dangerous see we're letting George down the crass the reason was we were three of us that were three 200 Pounders he was over only 150 so he had to go down uhhuh now all the way down he stuck temperature thermometers in holes all along in the ice when he got out of sight he yelled that the ice was so hard that he couldn't even stick a pick in it which was correct and then we formed a theory from that that for about every 50 ft of descent into Glacier Ice you get one degree lower in temperature now this has built up quite a number of following theories since then uh what I'm wondering about now working over these crevasses it looks to be very dangerous work but uh what has formed the crevasses in the first place uh anything can inform them of many causes an earthquake could changes a sudden changes in temperature but what you're looking at here Earl that's due to a bump in the Bedrock and when the ice flows over that it causes a crack to go from top to bottom several hundred feet even 1,000 ft or more it may only be about a half an inch wide but it yawns open and uh closes again with a slow movement of the glacier as it goes over that bump and there's no longer any strain those must be extremely deep there uh yes some of them go down several hundred feet but then uh they go they zigzag down like Fork lightning uh and at the bottom usually the snow pushes the ice rather pushes them together on account of its own pressure now to be able to go down uh and crawl over such types of ice you have to have very special equipment and I see those things on the bottom of the shoe that that's something that's quite interesting perhaps you'd give us an idea as to what's involved in that I know you have preferences in this type of equipment yourself oh yes uh you find what suits you better than others sometimes now this is an ordinary pair of crampons or stygeon and notice these are rather long spikes personally I prefer the little short little pyramid likee spikes because sometimes we've been on Glacier for 60 or more hours and you get tired yes and uh these long spikes you're liable to not lift your feet up enough and trip and you're only allowed one accident for Lifetime on a glacier well then you would want to have a very crusty ice a to use also yes and with these ice acts we cut steps where otherwise our shoes wouldn't hold and then this long pointed portion here with the reverse sections when you can't jump a grass it's too high you simply dig it in and then mus yourself over and pull knowing that that'll hold and then you can get to your objective whatever it happens to be well I can see that there's a science involved in this all in itself one thing I'm wondering about are these glaciers now are they growing at the present time uh for the most part Earl ever since about 1857 all the glaciers in the world have been receding or shrinking however there are some cases where they've been going forward now there's one in particular uh this is hole in the wall uh yes this is called the hole in the wall Glacier in Alaska and when I first took this picture it was 1900 27 where you see a glacier going into a lake and then a little forest and a scrape Rock in front of it now if you go back to the same place you wouldn't see anything in front except ice that has been going forward prodigiously about 3 mil or more in the past 5 years uh so that Glacier is really uh advancing and how about twin glaciers well twin glaciers make an interesting study too Earl there's a picture I took in 1927 of twin glaciers you see they come down from the big taco ice cap and if you notice they join together in front in about a 3 m wide Berg discharging front of ice in 1929 it broke and then when I took my last picture of it uh just a few years ago you can see the twin glaciers have completely altered their shape they're way back in the mountains now 5 miles away from where they were when I originally took them so the hole in the wall Glacier on one side is advancing and these two are are retreating so it shows you that they're a little temperamental too well now these glaciers move downward and eventually they come to the Sea what happens then oh then then is really one of the most dramatic cataclysmic uh acts of self-destruction I think you could ever hear of uh as soon as the glacier enters the sea uh it's boed up of course in the water suspended and uh from then on you find that uh uh the top begins to crumble it uh every little while you'll hear a roar like a cannon and then pieces will start into break off and so we went up right close to this Glacier in yakatat Bay is this soyer Glacier uh uh no this happens to be the hubard glacier here not named after me but another rasal name Hub and uh uh it's breaking off now at the proper time timing has everything to do with it taking a boat in there must be pretty risky well uh we have a stainless steel boat and uh that can go through anything you know those are falling very very slowly uh that isn't slow motion Earl You' think it was though but if you'll follow one of the pieces down when it starts to fall and count seconds you know at the rate of 32 ft per second per second the the acceleration you count 4 to 5 seconds in some of those Falls that means that that wall is about 400 ft High you know one thing we hear about is this idea of person speaking and uh some of that falls off is that right the sound of the voice uh no that's a big decimal point actually one time I put some Naval guns uh had some Naval gun shoot 5in shells into a glacier no effect I put a case of dynamite under one corner thinking I'd get a nice picture just a few chunks fell off it is the tidal range that causes these glaciers to rise and title fluctuation then is the important thing that's the most important thing as far as icebergs are concerned look at that go down yes they not only go down continually see from the top but pretty soon you'll see something else start to happen uh well now let me pose you a problem before we go on this now all of this is breaking off the top and so there must be ice going out underneath the water what happens to it yes the same portion that's on top is also underneath and uh as it breaks off from the top the Shelf underneath is still solid and it keeps pushing out and then eventually it breaks off and look what happens here what comes right right up out of the water yes a whole big dome comes up in one piece and doesn't break off because all it has to do is just simply get out of the water without breaking what would be the size of that piece oh that's a little chunk about the size of the uh capital building in Washington and of course only 17th of this is above the water and all the rest is beneath the water when it floats that is uh yes that's the then in salt water that's the normal condition and when they do break off as you see here again it's all like slow motion the part the part underneath breaking coming up turning over to assume its equilibrium of 17th above 67th below and then as you see here sometimes the city square blocks uh uh in area they float out to sea M and then eventually I suppose they get into warmer climates and then they're dissipated uh yes because the convection of water is enough to cause them to be eroded underneath and pretty soon they disappear well father Herbert I know that you brought back much valuable information from your various trips are you perhaps finding another one sometime soon oh yes sirl you know if if you keep going all your life you live a long time MH well I hope that when I'm 66 years old I'll be able to make some trips into Alaska you were mentioning these uh orchids that you found uh yes uh you know very few people realize that along the Alaska Peninsula you have probably one of the longest chains of volcanoes in the whole world uh they're average 35 Mi apart for about 2,000 Mi and they're connected with glaciers too because I found some huge volcanoes have blown out big holes and left a crater Glacier where they had been before well I see our time is growing short but father H before say goodbye I want you to promise that you come back and tell us about your expiration in glaciers and in volcanoes this summer we'll try to Earl we'll have to warm you up after all this cooling fine thanks a lot thank you I'll be back very soon good evening American Trust company's special student guest comes to us this evening from Mission High School here in San Francisco he's particularly interested in chemistry and that's doubly appropriate tonight because this week is chemical progress week Our Guest name name is Richard Nile welcome to science and action dick thank you very much Mr Jacobus we'd like to find out a little bit about mission High School first where is it located in San Francisco Mission high is located at 18th in the Lowa Street in the Mission District in the sunny Mission I think you called it out there isn't that right uh dick your principal at Mission High Mr Alvin Morris was very kind enough to send down a photograph of the school we're always very happy to look at school photographs it's on the television screen right now that looks like quite a large building to me yes we have about 2,000 students going there now what science courses have you taken under your instructor first what is your instructor's name ad Mission his name is Mr Alfred Taylor and what has Mr Taylor taught you in the way of scientific subjects well he's taught me biology chemistry and physics I see now your demonstration this evening is going to be on chemistry is that your main scientific interest yes it is well suppose you get ahead with this demonstration of yours this is a model of a precipitator it is used in many factories throughout the United States because its main use is to get rid of the smoke that is in the factories actually all it is is a piece of transparent tube with wire running around the outside surface and through the inside as you can see it's filled with smoke and to the inside wire I shall put a force of 30,000 volt and just watch the smoke as you can see it disappears this has become a great success in our industry today that's a very interesting demonstration you've got there dick that means that factories can get rid of their smoke without disturbing their neighbors doesn't it that's right now what do you plan to do after you leave Mission high school well after mission I plan to go to two years in City College and then later go to Cal I hope and take up chemistry there oh I hope so Well you certainly got your work cut out for you before you go we want to present you with a passbook this signifies the opening of a savings account in your name today by American Trust Company at the mission savings office here in San Francisco with it go our appreciation for being on the program and our best wishes for your future success thank you very much Mr jaob thank you for being with us that was Dick Nile from Mission High School here in San Francisco our animal of the week is the California ground squirrel it's one of the types of ground squirrels that are quite common in the United States this type is found west of the Rockies cute little fellas these are about four weeks old at the present time special pets of Mr Harold duncle comes to us from night's Ferry but sometimes these animals appear appear as albinos and in this next tank we have a small litter of albinos you can see they look just like the others except they're all white now these are still being fed by means of an eye dropper Harold how's our little rascal doing over there is he feeding on the eye dropper the way you've been feeding them for the past weeks he's doing all right see that is really something now how long have you been feeding him this way about two weeks now about two weeks uh-huh and uh uh oh here here a couple of them getting out here we'll just pop them right down in here hey this Fell's a little bit hungry again I'll put the milk over here and maybe we can uh about how much longer will you have to do this now well they're about old enough now to take care of themselves this fellow seems to have found out just where the milk is and he isn't going to wait for that eye dropper these are the cutest little squirrels that I've seen many a day of course the adults are sometimes the ban of existence of the farmer because he often wants to get rid of them they live very well in areas where you don't want them and then areas where you're not so much worried about them they quite often don't appear to favor they grow quite fast the number in a litter would be oh anywhere from 6 to 10 depending on the locality let's see one little fell here seems to have missed his part I'll just bring him in here and see if uh if he perhaps is interested now how did you teach them to stand up that way Harold ground squirrels of course uh act a great deal differently from the tree squirrels that we see hopping around in trees these fellows invariably stay on the ground and when they do as you seem to have some in your pocket there maybe we can get these back over here again having quite a problem here with these little fellas well Harold I I hope that you have a great deal of success with your your ground squirrels here and we'll keep us informed as to how they do oh here's another little fell down in here I'll just put him back in this cage and let us know what luck you have in raising them because a lot of people like pets and this most certainly is a very interesting one thanks a great deal now all of you space cadetes uh get your equipment together because on our next program we're going to talk about the problems involved in um survival at uh at uh high altitudes in other words how you would live up on very high mountains and secondly what you would do about survival when you're traveling at very high regions in space our special guest do John Lawrence University of California Captain William orlob US Air Force we hope you'll finally be with us then thanks a lot you are just seeing another in the fascinating television series science in action science in action is produced by the California Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Dr Robert C [Music] Miller for