15 July 2014 Our Last Full Day at Summit ... reported by the Aput Group

After we had eaten breakfast, we got a presentation from Gifford Wong. He is a PhD at Dartmouth. Before he started the presentation he talked a little bit about his earlier adventure to Antarctica, and then he had a little fun thing to do with us. He showed us how we could make Antarctic out from our left hand, and then some parts symbolized different places in Antarctica.

His presentation was about understanding how a glacier moves. The presentation was divided into 4 parts: What makes a glacier, types of glaciers, a story of climate in ice, and how does a glacier flow. This last part of the presentation was directly followed up by a hands-on activity. To do this we made our own flubber (can be compared to jelly, and it is also called GlacierA mass of ice that persists for many years and notably deforms and flows under the influence of gravity. Goo).

The glacier flow was demonstrated by putting the colored flubber into a half-pipe made of PVC. By adding toothpicks into the frontline of the flubber, it was illustrated that the flow was fastest in the upper central part of the flubber. In addition, we divided the flubber into smaller parts so when they got into the pipe they made a different color flubber so we could see how the layers formed. The funny thing about this is that on the top the flubber’s movement made a vertical shape, but at the bottom of the pipe the layers inside the flubber were horizontal.

In nice bright sun and wearing clean suits, we went into the snow together with Domi, who showed us how to take clean samples of the snow. The snow is kept frozen in bottles and analyzed in order to trace the elements in the snow. This information can be used to understand the origin of the precipitation since for instance a high amount of iron tells that the precipitation comes from the dust and thereby land while a higher amount of sodium is according to precipitation from the sea. After the snow sampling Domi kept us entertained by an interesting talk about her work on zooplankton at Palmer Station in the Antarctic Peninsula.

Next Dorthe Katrine Olsen told us about Greenlandic culture and her presentation ended with a very funny game where we were partnered two and two and our wrist were tied together, independently but we were all stuck together. The solution required intelligence that some of us had but all of us had difficulty with.

Later this day two of us helped Domi getting a sled, some planks back from TAWO, the place that she do science. The fun part about this was we did it on a ski-doo, but the ski-doo was not as fun as we hoped. While we were helping Domi the rest did a little science of our own. It was about to find out whom had the best sunglasses of us JSEP peeps. We did this by measuring the incoming light from the sun into the sensors and then the light that went into the sensors through the sunglasses. The person with the best sunglasses turned out to be Lisa’s and Marie's.

Another big event of the day was the snow core drilling that we tried under supervision of Max Berkelhammer. It was fun to see and try the real drilling equipment, and also interesting to compare the impression of the ice from the snow pit to the snow core.

Before dinner, some of us went out with Domi in the "Tucker" to the end of the landing field, which is the longest skiway in the world, because of the long track you need in order to brake on ice. The skiway is 3 miles long and the Tucker was quite slow, so it took a while to get there. In order not to make the landing field a mess, we had to drive kind of offroads, right beside the track. When we arrived at the end of the track, there was complete silence, and nothing to be seen in the area around, except snow of course and the flags marking the landing field. Shortly after the trip went back to Summit, but that way took even longer. On the way home the Tucker apparently did not want to switch gear, so in order not to push it too hard, we had to move slow and steady. The ride home was in average 10 miles/hour.

Words and Phrases of the day: (English - Danish - Spanish - Greenlandic)

Ice drilling – sne boring – perforación del hielo – sikumik qillerineq

Snow sampling – sne samling - muestreo de nieve – Apummik tigusineq

The Longest ice landing field in the world – den længeste is landingsbane I verden - El campo de aterrizaje de hielo más larga del mundo – nunarsuarmi sikumik mittarfik