Things that worked in the
experiment:
The
flubber
when it was cut off at the edge would react very quickly by increasing
in speed at the margin and along the center of the glacier. Also
the flubber glacier acted like a glacier when there was a constant in
flux of volume at the top or head of the glacier. The
displacement vectors derived from the program Surfer, showed that there
was a dominate movement of the particles down glacier with there being
only minor movement of the glacier to sides of the glacier. The
flubber glacier also showed an increase in velocity which has been seen
in after affects of the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica (de
Angelis and Skvarca 2003).
Problems
with the experiment:
One of the biggest problems was trying
to get the
saltwater to have a high enough density so that the flubber would
float. Another thing that happened was that the flubber after
being in the saltwater would loose all of its flubber
properties, that is that the flubber would become very stiff,
hard, brittle, and it would loose its elastic properties. Another
problem was that when the flubber was being run the model did not
increase in speed once it got to the margin between the water and the
plexiglass. It instead
slowed down and caused there to be a bulge at the grounding line of the
glacier due to the decrease in the velocity.
Another thing that happened is
that because the flubber changed
properties the longer it stayed in the saltwater, the structure of the
lobe of the flubber that was in the saltwater. What should have
happened every time was that the flubber would ground and then it would
start to float in the water causing there to be a step-like shape in
the slope of the glacier model. This only happened some of the
time. If the lobe did not have enough time to produce itself in
the water the buoyancy forces would not create the step-like shape on
the tongue. The step-like shape would also not occur if the
flubber had been in the saltwater too long. This would also
happen if the saltwater was not dense enough.
Conclusions:
In conclusion I think that this model
showed that there was an increase in the velocity at the margin of the
glacier after a collapse of an ice shelf. The movement of the
flubber was similar to some examples in Antarctica as state
earlier. The problem is that the proportion of the glacier and
the ice shelf is very high, that is that the ice shelf is huge in
comparison to the feeding glacier.
Things
that I would change for future runs:
- The size of the glacier and flubber
lobe to make it closer to natural conditions.
- The use of more cameras to see the side
view of the flubber glacier to get changes in vertical displacement and
velocity over time.
- Taking pictures more frequently to see
if the change in the velocity was something that propagated along the
flubber glacier.
- The use of banded flubber to see the
changes in the flubber better.
- The use of a deeper saltwater basin to
see if the flubber glacier would float.
- Using a more evenly spread marker
system to track the change in the stresses more evenly to lessen the
error due loss of markers during different time intervals.
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