Ice Run Report

May 31, 2007

May's Ice run was made on May 31st, with Morgan S. as Assistant. The weather was sunny and warm with puffy clouds. Ambient temp of approx. 70 F. We went to Denver and loaded the ice, stopped in Boulder for lunch and got to Nederland around 3PM. We opened the shed and then the cryonic chamber and started to

guestimate the ice left.......

The largest block remnant is less than 10 pounds. There was approximately 40 pounds of block ice left, 5 pounds of mass ice left, and about 175 pounds of boxed pellets, for an approximate total of 220 pounds....a record low amount of ice. (not counting the Split Incident where all the ice was gone but the sarcophagus had deep frost indicating it hadn't thawed.)

 

You can see (left) that the lack of a full cryonic chamber can raise the temperature a bit, although it still stays within acceptable parameters. When we opened the chamber, the very top of Grandpa's sarcophagus was at a balmy -65F

Once the Dry Ice is added, the temperature drops to a nippy -100F and Grandpa is snug as a bug in a rug until the next time.

 

 

 

Here's the shot of our Pet Crystal...my, my how you've grown! almost like it's trying to grow legs.

Here's what our Pet looked like last month, before and after being exposed to ambient temperatures for an hour...

Note how the crystals "legs" always grow in a similar manner...directly to the left.

 

 

Right after the above photos were taken, our Pet Crystal decided to self destruct and leaped to it's death in the chamber. we were able to salvage some remains, and here's an excellent example of how these crystals form.

Note how the repetition of the hexagonal shape builds up into an elongated bar like structure.

 

 

We felt so bad for our pet of so many months, but we realized that the position it was in was rather precarious and the constant monthly defrost must have taken it's toll on the attachment.

So, we decided to look for another pet in a more stable location and voila.....

Isn't she cute?? We'll be watching her for the next few months.

 

Of course, she has a lot of friends......they're everywhere. Vast fields of glistening blades of water ice.....growing, replicating, decreasing the entropy of the system.

 

Some are pretty impressive all by themselves....

We loaded up all of our ice into the cryonic chamber and left Grandpa with approximately 1800 pounds of it.

 

Although the cryonic chamber is almost full, it is about 2 to 4 hundred pounds short of the ideal amount for winter.

 

It would be prudent to move up the Ice Run schedule to get more ice sooner.

 

After cleaning up a little and breaking down all the boxes, we closed Grandpa's cryonic chamber up and closed and locked the Tuff Shed.

 

Next Ice Run is scheduled for June 26