Formation
When the water surface begins to lose heat rapidly, the water becomes supercooled. Turbulence, caused by strong winds or flow from a river, will mix the supercooled water throughout its entire depth. The supercooled water will already be encouraging the formation of small ice crystals (frazil ice) and the crystals will be mixed into the upper layer and form a surface layer. Sea ice growth in turbulent water differs from sea ice growth in calm water. In turbulent water, the ice crystals accumulate at the surface, forming a grease-ice layer composed of individual ice crystals and small irregular clumps of ice crystals. In calm water conditions, nilas, a think elastic crust, forms at the surface, which thickens as water molecules freeze to the ice-water interface.
Read more about this topic: Grease Ice
Famous quotes containing the word formation:
“The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The formation of an oppositional world view is necessary for feminist struggle. This means that the world we have most intimately known, the world in which we feel “safe” ... must be radically changed. Perhaps it is the knowledge that everyone must change, not just those we label enemies or oppressors, that has so far served to check our revolutionary impulses.”
—Bell (c. 1955)
“That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)