{"id":2388,"date":"2016-01-12T09:16:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T14:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/?p=2388"},"modified":"2016-01-12T09:22:20","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T14:22:20","slug":"a-snapshot-of-life-today-in-the-miller-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/2016\/01\/12\/a-snapshot-of-life-today-in-the-miller-range\/","title":{"rendered":"A snapshot of life today in the Miller Range"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

View from outside of Nina and Morgan’s tent ~7 pm. Looks bright and sunny but the wind will slice right through you.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Today we awoke to strong winds once again, as well as quite a bit of snow drift. Here in Antarctica there’s lots of ice and snow but very little moisture, so the snow behaves less like the sticky white stuff that we’re used to in North America and more like sand. Snow particles are blown by the wind until they hit an obstacle (like our tent), and then is deposited in a pile where the windspeed decreases (in front of our door). Jim came by the tent this morning to let us know the plan for the day (a tent day, as you might have guessed) but his morning greeting sounded strangely far away.Turns out our door was completely buried with snow! Thankfully Jim took pity on us and shoveled for us on the outside while I kicked and punched from the inside (the snow, not Jim). At mid morning the windspeed was 25 mph with a temperature of 0 degrees F, but over the course of the day it\u00a0has\u00a0deteriorated slightly. In the late afternoon I got a windspeed of 30 mph and a temperature of -2 degrees F, so we’ll see what happens overnight. We’ve had an excellent season, so we’re not yet feeling too antsy about this weather delay. Yet. In addition to being chilly, this weather is also remarkably loud. I was talking to my dad on the satellite phone, and he could hear the wind shaking the tent. I thought I’d give him and you all a view of what that sound can look like by giving you a view of the camp from my tent. You can see the always-important shovel in the foreground and the solar panels keeping us powered and blogging right behind it, along with the poo and science tents in the background. If you look closely, you’ll see some blowing snow in the foreground and something that looks like mist obscuring the tents in the background–that’s the blowing snow that piles up in front of doors and clogs up skidoos. Already the drifts around camp have become significantly enlarged. We likely have some work ahead of us to dig out the campsite once the winds die down. They have to die down at some point, right? While we’re stuck in the tent, we can catch up on a variety of chores, including making water–fun! If you’ve planned ahead and chipped ice before the storm, you can simply reach outside to your ice bucket and grab some large chunks to start melting on your stove. It takes quite a bit of energy to melt ice and turn it into boiling water, so the tent typically gets noticeably colder during this process (see the postscript\u00a0from rph below<\/em>). But the result is a stockpile of delicious, hot water that you can keep in thermoses for when you need it. Readers, please take a moment to think about how great it is that you can have water (!) at any time (!!) of any temperature (!!!). Amazeballs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Making a batch of the finest hand-crafted water made from an old ANSMET family recipe. <\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

–Posted by Nina shivering in a wind-blasted tent, south Miller Range, 12 January 2016 <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Postscript from rph:<\/strong> Nina’s observation that the tent gets colder (sometimes a lot colder) when you’re melting ice may be counterintuitive to some; \u00a0and since I’m a teacher and the semester has started, there’s\u00a0a little lesson in thermodynamics here I thought I’d pass on for those who want it. \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

To change\u00a0water\u00a0from a solid into a liquid requires breaking the relatively rigid bonds that define a crystalline material like\u00a0ice. Most of us intuitively understand that breaking something\u00a0rigid takes extra\u00a0energy, whether we’re talking melting crystals or hitting a brick wall with a hammer. As a result, to melt ice we not only have to add energy to warm the ice degree-by-degree from about -40 deg. C (the icesheet is cold!), we have to add the additional\u00a0 “bond-breaking” energy. \u00a0That bond-breaking takes roughly 80x more energy<\/span> than simply warming water a degree, \u00a0and only happens right when the ice is at\u00a00 deg C; \u00a0at that temp you keep adding in energy but instead of changing temperature, the H2O \u00a0just changes\u00a0from solid to liquid. Once you’ve added all\u00a0that bond-breaking energy, everything’s liquid and you can start heating it again.<\/em><\/p>\n

The effect of this is very evident in the tent, even more so nowadays with very efficient stoves and pots with heat-capturing devices on their bottoms (you can see a set of thermal exchange slots on the bottom of the pot in the photo). \u00a0While the ice is still all cold, \u00a0there’s enough heat escaping around the ice to warm the tent at least a little; and the pot creaks and groans because parts of it are hot and parts are cold and things keep moving around. \u00a0But once you’ve gotten close to 0 degrees and the pot is filled with\u00a0a mix of ice and water\u00a0(or more accurately,\u00a0the bottom of the pan is\u00a0covered with liquid), the groaning stops. Now the pot is absorbing a lot\u00a0more energy, that bond-breaking energy, 80x more slowly, and with a big, full and\u00a0efficient pot, very little heat escapes to warm the tent. \u00a0Vets of our program might note that when we were using crappy old stoves, poorly ventilated tents and cheap tin pots, \u00a0the effect was less noticeable; \u00a0but more efficient fuel use, less fire hazards and less carbon monoxide are significant benefits, worth a temporarily chilly tent. \u00a0 And the carbon monoxide probably would have stopped us from noticing it anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

Even geekier post-postscript for\u00a0math geeks:<\/strong>\u00a0Warming 1 milliliter of water 1 degree takes 1 calorie. Most tents use about 5 l of water, usually boiled, \u00a0per day, so we’re talking 5000 \u00a0x 140 calories\u00a0just to change the water’s temperature from -40 to +100 deg., and then another 80 x 5000 calories to change\u00a0the water from\u00a0 solid to liquid. So getting a day’s worth of water means giving up\u00a0over a milliion calories of the stove’s warmth. Note these are thermodynamic calories, not food calories (which are 1000x bigger). \u00a0But stretching that analogy,\u00a0\u00a0that’s the equivalent of skipping half\u00a0of the\u00a0meals in a typical US adult diet. It definitely affects your comfort.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we awoke to strong winds once again, as well as quite a bit of snow drift. Here in Antarctica there’s lots of ice and snow but very little moisture, so the snow behaves less like the sticky white stuff that we’re used to in North America and more like sand. Snow particles are blown by the wind until they hit an obstacle (like our tent), and then is deposited in a pile where the windspeed decreases (in front of our door). Jim came by the tent this morning to let us know the plan for the day (a tent day,<\/p>\n

Continue reading… A snapshot of life today in the Miller Range<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":2389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/111\/2016\/01\/14203518\/image1-12.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2388"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2396,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions\/2396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caslabs.case.edu\/ansmet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}