Excerpt from Ice Formation: With Special Reference to Anchor-Ice and Frazil

N 0 one set of conditions may be said to hold from year to year, on account of the variations in the severity of the winters. Therefore, before an engineering scheme is carried out, a careful study should be made of neighboring conditions, previous sum mer and winter levels, and deductions made from a considera tion of the native traditions over an extended region round about. Indeed, where possible, at least two years should be devoted to the study of the ice conditions at any particular locality where it is desired to erect an expensive plant. It is a well-known law of Nature that any change in a system in equilibrium due to outside conditions brings about a change within the system in a reverse direction. TO convert a sub stance of higher energy-content (water) into one Of lower energy - content (ice), a large amount of energy is liberated in the form of heat to resist that change. Water differs from ice in possessing a store of energy latent in itself and which we measure as heat. The magnitude of this energy may be realized when we remember that, in the passage of water into ice, enough heat is liberated to warm 143 times its own mass one degree on the Fahrenheit scale above the freezing-point.

A study of ice formation means a study of heat transfer, and of the physical laws governing its movement from one body to another. It is my intention, therefore, before considering the practical details of river-ice formation, to run over, in as brief a manner as possible, the laws governing heat transfer. A review of this kind is important at the outset, in order that the essential points of the subject in hand may be made clear in the light Of modern ideas of physics.

The position occupied by water in the economy Of Nature is most remarkable, and everywhere we see natural conditions influenced and moulded by its wonderful properties.

It has the highest capacity for heat Of any substance, and it is this which governs to a large extent the temperature Of the earth. It tempers the seaboard and equalizes the climates of the earth in a way which no other known substance could do. The remarkable increase in thermal capacity as the freezing point is reached makes it more difficult for water to be cooled to that critical point; and when the freezing-point is reached ice can form only at the expense of a large amount of latent heat, larger than any other known substance.

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