When ice melts it takes up 92% of its original volume as ice. Let the total mass of earth's icecaps be x, and let y percent of this ice be above water. Express y in terms of x so that no change will occur if the ice caps melt completely.
2006-11-17 11:51:53 · 3 answers · asked by clamcrunchies2 2 in Environment
If a glacier has 8% of its volume above water it will produce no change in the water level when melting. The answer I was looking for was 92% mass below water and 8% mass above water.
2006-11-18 12:34:51 · update #1
great question
2006-11-17 11:58:53 · answer #1 · answered by boricua cello player 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nice answer, rscanner. And since the anomalous temperatures being focused on by Globalwarmists are those around the Arctic, where the ice bergs are calving, their claims to rising sea levels as a result of same are not merely wrong, they're bogus (=they knew better and still said it).
The anomalies over Antarctica are colder on average, so that scenario doesn't contribute. Thanks.
Sorry Asker for not addressing your question, but rscanner gave the clues and the point is that the question, which came from your teacher, is badly framed. Rephrasing rscanner, there will be no change (presumably the question was about sea levels) if the whole Artic cap melts, while there will be a change equivalent to 0.92 of the whole volume of the cap on Antarctica. You will need more information than you had for an actual height difference.
On the other hand, it's also true that there is no value for x and y such that *no* change will occur if the ice caps melt completely.
2006-11-17 12:33:14 · answer #2 · answered by questor_2001 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The key here is that any ice floating in the water will not make a volume change in the submerged portion, so that the water level will not change for ice floating in the water - like the Artic ice cap. As you already said if ice is 92% the density of water then only 92% of the ice will be under the water, the remaining 8% will be above the water. However once melted the ice will fill the "hole" left by the ice perfectly.
However the antartic ice is a different story as it is resting on land. Any melting will increase the level of the ocean by the amount of water melted.
2006-11-17 11:59:07 · answer #3 · answered by rscanner 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋