Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Wonders of the Physical World: The Glacier, the Iceberg, the Ice-Field, and the Avalanche
The peculiar part played by crystallization will be much better understood, if we cast, with Professor Tyndall, a more searching glance at the intimate constitution of ice.
At every temperature above 32° F. Says our illustrious physicist, the motion of the heat suffices to keep the watery atoms disengaged from their rigid union. But' this motion becomes so slack at 32° F. That the atoms then cling to one another, and unite in a solid. Not the less is this union subject to certain laws. To the majority of men and women a lump of ice seems to possess no more beauty or interest than a bit of glass but to the enlightened mind of the scientific observer, ice is to glass what an oratorio of Handel is to the cries of the street or market. Ice is a music, glass a n01se ice is order, glass is confusion. In glass, the molecular forces have accomplished an inextricable labyrinthine network; in ice, they have woven a regular embroidery, the marvel lous designs of which we wish to reveal to the reader.
How shall we contrive, continues Professor Tyndall, to dissect, as it were, this ice?
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