Thread: Ice Saw pictures

(Yawn) Struth, Bob, if I've seen one polar ice core sawing pic, I've seen a million...

Thanks for posting mate, interesting stuff.


Cheers..............Sean

Seems like a lot of work to get ice for ya drink?

Wouldnt the breath from the guy with the chisel contaminate the sample, seeing as how you have spent a $Brazillion bollars on not getting the ice cube contaminated?
What if he farts too..?

Al :confused:

Originally Posted by ozwinner

Seems like a lot of work to get ice for ya drink?

Wouldnt the breath from the guy with the chisel contaminate the sample, seeing as how you have spent a $Brazillion bollars on not getting the ice cube contaminated?
What if he farts too..?

Al :confused:

Good point, but the lab is actually sort of fartproof. I've been in this lab and farted and provided you keep it quiet, no one can tell.

What the picture doesn't show is the icy (-18oC) gale of super clean air coming in from above that sweeps particles and gases generated by humans away from the table. The air goes down to the floor which is perforated and then recycled back to a large chiller and air filter.

Think you need your nose checked, Bob

Originally Posted by scooter

Think you need your nose checked, Bob

Could be. . . . . . .

Reminds me of one of THE most embarrassing event in my younger days. It was late in the day and I had just wrapped up things for the day and was leaving for home and feeling a touch windy I dropped a clanger just before opening and stepping out of my office door. Unbeknownst to me, standing with her hand on the door handle on the other side of the door was this very attractive young blonde woman that everyone at work had been chasing. The little wrinkle on her nose and the slight backward stagger said it all. She never spoke to me after that!

Hi Bob,
I'm not going to comment on that last post , except to say in our offices we all share the "air", as it recirculates... smoke, turps fumes, farts, whatever!
Back on topic, that is a nice bit of engineering on the lathe... did you have anything to do with the construction, or simply an interested party? What is it going to achieve, like testing for carbon or something?


Cheers,

So how do they get the polar ice from the South/North pole to Perth? And why?

Originally Posted by Andy Mac

Hi Bob,
Back on topic, that is a nice bit of engineering on the lathe... did you have anything to do with the construction, or simply an interested party? What is it going to achieve, like testing for carbon or something?

This lathe is the latest of 3 designed by a couple of Aussies and a French physicist colleagues at work who are experienced in decontaminating ice cores. We are already working on the fourth one. The lathe in the photos was built in our shop at work by a contracted machinist (Steve) who used our shop but also used his own CNC machine to make some of the parts. Steve is a fantastic craftsman and we really owe him bigtime. I have some input at our weekly research group meetings particularly in designing the saw blades. Currently we have some 20 stainless steel blades made up by a saw doctor. They are also used one of my "saw setters". The blades were mecanically and electropolished and then cleaned in various acids for months before use. I was much more involved in designing the labs that provide the ultraclean environment in which the lathe is used. I built our first clean lab from scratch back in 1985 (carpentry, plumbing, electrical, air handling, plastic welding and painting).

SilentC: Transport from Pole to Perth. The icecores are kms long but are broken up into 3 -5 m long segments, wrapped in plastic and shipped to Tassie in freezer ships where they are stored in an freezer warehouse. We only get small (80cm long) segments to analyse and they are air freighted to Perth in big eskys packed with dry ice. This is very hair raising because the air freight people have no idea what they are and are apt to forget about them and we then find we have an esky full of useless water!

Why do we do this: see http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...11&postcount=4

The ice cores are an archive of the earths atmosphere going back in time. This includes miniscule amounts of dust, which we are experts in analysing in the cores, so we can work out how dusty/dry the earth was 1000, 10000, 100000 years ago. We can also work out which part of continents the dust comes from. The results are important for climate modellers to study climate change especially the changes in climates as we move between the various ice ages.

Cheers

So it wasn't towed to Perth by Dick Smith then?

Much more interesting than what I do. I always thought I should have gotten into one of the sciences but when I was young enough to do it, all I wanted to do was play in bands

Regarding the air freight people, wouldn't it be a good idea to write something on the side like "Keep Frozen"? Just an idea

How do you know the polar bear didn’t pee on it before they took the sample?

It does look a bit yellow doesn’t it?

It does look a bit yellow

You need a new monitor, Wongo. Or glasses...

…this is what we do with polar ice.

Originally Posted by silentC

Regarding the air freight people, wouldn't it be a good idea to write something on the side like "Keep Frozen"? Just an idea

We do but either the air freight people can't read or they don't care.

Originally Posted by Wongo

How do you know the polar bear didn’t pee on it before they took the sample?

It does look a bit yellow doesn’t it?

Yeah it does but that is just the lighting.

Anyway if it's from Antarctica there is no problem as there are no polar bears in antarctica. However, we may have penguin pee instead.

Because Polar bears and penguins eat marine creatures the strontium (Sr) isotopes in their pee is the same as that of the ocean which is a fixed value. By measuring Sr isotope patterns we can easily see this effect compared to Sr in dust which differs depending on which country it comes from.

Actually when you melt the ice and evaporate the water away there is never anything visible left in the beaker. Yet if you take a clean pipette and add a tiny drop of acidified water to the beaker and roll it around eventually it sticks to something - that is the dust in the ice. We then suck up the tiny drop and analyse that.