This summer, in addition to five other interns, we also had four students through the Climate and Life program: Camille, Jeremy, Naomi, and Jennifer. They were looking at the difference between regelation (pressure melting and recrystallization) and viscous deformation, which could be mechanisms of flow at the base of glaciers under the right conditions. Mike built a frame to go with Rob's dead weight apparatus that the students assembled. They calculated the stress for each increment of weight to be added.
They did a great job drawing the below schematic of the set up. The frame was used to apply a dead weight to the top of the ice, which was resting on top of spheres of various size and composition. The hypothesis was that under some conditions regelation would dominate over viscous deformation and other conditions it would not. Since any melt formed would drop down below the balls due to gravity, we would be able to tell the difference. Also, in theory, regelation should be faster with spheres of higher thermal conductivity so we thought me might be able to tell the difference that way.
They printed up their motivations, methods, and results into a nice poster. Title was all their idea, and I love it!
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