The Cellar - 3/17/2005: Massive ice sculpture in Alaska... collapses

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3/17/2005: Massive ice sculpture in Alaska... collapses

http://cellar.org/2005/icesculpture.jpg

A gent (whose real name I can't map to a Cellar userid, but thanks) suggested this item, which was Farked but deserves further attention anyway. An Alaskan guy started building an ice sculpture by turning on a sprinkler and leaving it on. With further sprinkler adjustment as needed, over 5 months the tower of ice was over 150 feet high.

full story a week ago

Here it is with a guy climbing on it so you can get the scope of it:

http://cellar.org/2005/icewithclimber.jpg

But before I could get to posting the image, a few days ago the tower collapsed!

http://cellar.org/2005/icecollapsed.jpg

colorful web site for the whole thing with many pics

I love this project, and I hope to be able to try my own version one winter.

That is a very cool thing indeed.

Unfortunately PA temps don't usually get cold enough for long enough to sustain such magnificence.

I did get to see such a thing form accidentally ... The water tower at the state hospital is across from my office. The tower sprung a bit of a leak.

State Hospital Security isn't really good about noticing things, including escaping patients. It was cool to watch and so nobody called them, I guess. Or perhaps it was a jurisdicitonal thing, since the Water Tower is on the farm property, and that's being overseen by the county ...

In any event, the cool pile of ice was about half the height of the tower before the weather got too warm.

I'm sorry. I didn't see the link you already put in your post. Nevermind. :blush:

That's got to be some water bill leaving those hoses running all winter...

It's too bad it collapsed. I was following this thing, and hadn't checked in in a few weeks. I'm sad, kind of like when Old Man of the Mountain in NH collapsed.

that is absolutely awesome. i hope nobody was standing close when it fell.

in july the guy will be out in his yard and find a pile of bones of some poor soul who was admiring the artwork.

Why it collapsed

From the story: "Reeves expects to have accumulated around 80,000 tons of ice..."

It crushed itself.

You can see evidence of just how heavy and hard the ice was pressed, by looking at the brilliant blue parts in the wreckage of the last photo. That's the same blue you see in glaciers due to the extreme pressure compressing the ice. The reason for glaciers' blue color is that the density of the ice is so compressed that the ice crystals' forms are such that they absorb all the other colors of the light spectrum.

A vertical conical baby glacier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glatt

I guess the water was free since he paid $200 to $300 per month in electricity pumping it out of the ground.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigV

I think I recall him spraying dye on it. Was any of the dye blue?

And if it was $200-$300/month, that's over a grand for the sculpure in water alone.

Quote:

that's over a grand for the sculpure in water alone

yeah, but he has now been featured in the cellar... how can you put a price on that?

I'm glad he did it. It's extremely cool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigV

Actually, that was blue dye (in the ice tower, not the glaciers).

He did use blue dye, and occasionally yellow (eww). That's not to say there couldn't have been some legit blue ice in there, too.

this guy is perfect cellar material. tony can you see about dragging this guy into our pit of sarcasm?

Quote:

Okay, in regard to the unmitigated audacity of the fine chap who did not recognize the humor in the above statement on global warming, and suggested its error, in his comments about this website, on another website..... The net temperature of planet Earth is cooling, by galactic law in regard to mass and heat in a hot rock whizzing through cold space. Just roll the window down and hold your hand outside next time you are at 37,000 feet in a jet. The guy in the seat behind you might whack you with a magazine, and ask you to roll up the window. It is chilly out there. And further, humans are doing what humans are designed to do, despite their general incompetence. More of them will be doing the more advanced, more fun things, as humans learn more things. The total industrial manufacturing pollution and heat output to put a computer in every Chinese home, and also on their laps and in their palms, plus the implants, an SUV, and a cell phone, is gonna happen, etceteras. I gotta get a cell phone. You cannot stop them from doing what you and they like to do. You will not even stop yourself. There is only one way to reduce their scant effect on the planet. That is to reduce the total number of humans, by sufficiently educating them as to the benefits of producing fewer babies, especially the ones subsidized by welfare tax money seized from working people. More ice climbing babies are okay though. If you believe that there is another way, because you are ignorant of the human design, and you hastily arrived at your conclusion before you asked and answered more questions of your contradicted conclusion, perhaps believing all those institutionally fabricated illusions of greedy government and organization leaders

We have a fountain here in KC that they allow to run during the winter...it does some pretty neat stuff, although since no one actually moves the water source upward over the months, it doesn't get quite as...um...towering.

Here's its normal appearance...