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Concept
Iceberg
Summary
An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially-derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 led to the formation of the International Ice Patrol in 1914. Much of an iceberg is below the surface, which led to the expression "tip of the iceberg" to illustrate a small part of a larger unseen issue. Icebergs are considered a serious maritime hazard.
Icebergs vary considerably in size and shape. Icebergs that calve from glaciers in Greenland are often irregularly shaped while Antarctic ice shelves often produce large tabular (table top) icebergs. The largest iceberg in recent history, named B-15, was measured at nearly in 2000. The largest iceberg on record was an Antarctic tabular iceberg measuring sighted west of Scott Island, in the South Pacific Ocean, by the USS Glacier on November 12, 1956. This iceberg was larger than Belgium.
The word iceberg is a partial loan translation from the Dutch word ijsberg, literally meaning ice mountain, cognate to Danish isbjerg, German Eisberg, Low Saxon Iesbarg and Swedish isberg.
Typically about one-tenth of the volume of an iceberg is above water, which follows from Archimedes's Principle of buoyancy; the density of pure ice is about 920 kg/m3 (57 lb/cu ft), and that of seawater about . The contour of the underwater portion can be difficult to judge by looking at the portion above the surface.
The largest icebergs recorded have been calved, or broken off, from the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica. Icebergs may reach a height of more than above the sea surface and have mass ranging from about 100,000 tonnes up to more than 10 million tonnes. Icebergs or pieces of floating ice smaller than 5 meters above the sea surface are classified as "bergy bits"; smaller than 1 meter—"growlers". The largest known iceberg in the North Atlantic was above sea level, reported by the USCG icebreaker Eastwind in 1958, making it the height of a 55-story building.
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