The Iceberg Research Paper

In 1910, a glacier off the west coast of Greenland calved an iceberg that would become a chilling part of history. During the night of April 14, 1912, the Iceberg, as it would become known, carved a fatal slice into the Titanic, and the ship that people said "God himself could not sink" became the "greatest sea disaster of all time." How could this deadly iceberg have formed? When snowflakes fall to the ground, the delicate points on the snow crystals break, and the rounded grains mass together. When someone walks on the snow or makes a snowball, the pressure crushes and partially melts the snow so it becomes hard and icy. On a small scale, that represents what takes place on a much larger scale when ice fields are formed.

The only evidence it bore of the impact was a smear of red paint along one side. On the morning of April 15, 1912, the chief steward of the Prinze Adelbert was intrigued to see an iceberg with red paint, evidence of a collision in the past twelve hours. He was unaware of the Titanic tragedy as he photographed the Iceberg, which then moved into the Gulf Stream, where the water was five degrees warmer. This rise in temperature overwhelmed the Iceberg, and it melted completely while it was still hundreds of miles off the Bermuda coast. Evaporation took moisture from that part of the Gulf Stream into the sky, where it was stored in clouds. Some fell as snow over Greenland and joined an ice field there. Perhaps in 500 to 1,000 years that snow will complete the cycle and become part of another glacier that calves into the Jakobshavn Fjord. In the aftermath of the Titanic tragedy, an international conference was held in London. In 1913, the International Ice Patrol (IIP), sponsored by more than a dozen countries, was created as an observation and ice-patrol service for the Atlantic shipping lanes. The United States Coast Guard has administered the IIP without interruption, except when the Coast Guard was on active duty during the world wars. Twice each day during the patrol season (generally February to July), the IIP broadcasts positions of icebergs and boundaries of pack ice to Europe, Great Britain, Canada, and the United