Ice Report 4/26/07
The day dawned pleasant enough....but I had no assistant today, as no one replied to the Request for Assistant (RFA) this time. So, I had a leisurely breakfast and set off for the Ice Place.
At the Ice Store, there was no one around again so I git to run the forklift myself. Getting pretty good at that. I loaded, covered and secured 1600 pounds of boxed ice for the run to Ned.
There
was some fresh snow left from the storm a couple days ago, but most had melted
by the time we arrived.
The place is definately falling into dis-repair.
Good thing we're fairly self sufficient!
The rock walls are deteriorating due to erosion....pretty soon, everything will be buried under a pile of talus.
After opening up the cryonic storage facility, we popped open
the cryonic chamber itself and said hello to our pet crystal....
This crystal has been growing for several months, now. It is interesting that by some definitions of life, crystals are alive. They are highly organized, they grow, and they reproduce,
A crystal here has a pretty easy time of it, except when we open the chamber to re-stock it with dry ice. Going from a -85 F to a plus 60 F tends to wreak havoc with crystal growth.
Note the condition of our pet crystal after being opened up for about an hour...
Not to worry....she'll grow back.
As
can be seen by our high-tech thermal display, our cryogenic temperature was
right around -85F.
This is pretty much the temperature at the top surface of the stainless steel sarcophagus, with all the ice gone from that specific location.. If you were to measure further down, about 4-6 inches, the temperature would increase to around -109F, the temperature of frozen carbon dioxide.
All the old ice re-positioned and ready for the new. Approximately 180 in
block, 60 in mass and 210 in boxed pellets remained.
Boxes have been filled with pellets and the last newblock is ready to be
positioned.
We added 1600 pounds of new ice to 450 pounds of old leaving us with approximately 2050 pounds total.