13 November, 1997

First morning on the ice at Siple Dome came very quickly.   The sun was up
all night and must have been tired since I could not find it when I awoke.
The clouds had come down instead to blanket the already white ice. The
cloud that covered the ground is called fog both at home and here.   You
can make a type of fog if you breath on a real cold glass or on the car
window when  it is cold outside.   The water vapor in the air forms clouds
just like your breath on a cold glass.   When it hits the earth we call if
fog.    I love to walk in the clouds at home, how about you?

It was colder than I would have liked it to be (-18 degrees Celsius or -2
degrees Fahrenheit) but with my fur and nice clothes I was able to stay
nice and warm.    At the South Pole this morning the temperature was around
-37 degrees Celsius or -34.6 degrees Fahrenheit.   I was sure glad that I
wasn't there.  Humans here look real funny in the cold.  The bundle up in
great big red coats with hoods that have fur around them.   They wear snow
pants which they call wind pants and huge gloves and boots.   They also
mush wear things on their faces if on a snowmobile or in the wind.
They look  like giant red snowmen but they say they are warm.

We did drive out to our work site and get it ready to start work in the
morning all day long.   In order to get there, we must drive a snowmobile
and you often get covered in snow and hoar frost that falls from the sky
because  it is so cold.   I looked more like a snowman after the ride out
and back into camp.

Because we were not able to do much this morning, I got to talk with Chris
Shuman  and    Xin  Chen who work at NASA Goddard Flight Center.  They are
studying how the ice moves in streams around Siple Dome.   Siple Dome is a
type of hill with over 1000 meters of ice beneath it.    Around the Dome
there are streams of ice just like streams of water that are moving from a
higher area that has lots of snow on it.    The streams are called A, B, C,
and D.   There may be more but I forgot!!!!   Chris and Xin are studying
Ice Stream D.   It moves very rapidly in the center (sometimes over a 100
meters per year) and much slower on the edges (1 to 10 meters per year).
Stream C does not move at all.    They are going to set out flags on the
ice stream and find out where they are located by a system called GPS.
The GPS is the Global Positioning System and they use satellites to find
out exactly where they are.    GPS  is the system used in cars to find
where they are and are often used by people who hunt, fish, or just hike.
They will leave the flags there for a whole year and then come back next
year to see how far they have move.   If you would like to find out more
about Chris and his adventures try
http://igloo.gsfc.nasa.gov/~shuman/home.html

Something you may like to try similar to what Chris and Xin are doing is
find a stream near your home and measure off  two meters on the bank.   Be
careful around water that you do not fall in.   You may want an adult to be
with you.    You will need a stop watch or a watch that has a second hand
so  that you can time something moving in the water.    Place an object
like a stick in  the water at the first point that you measured and start
you stop watch when it hits the water  .  Walk down the bank or have a
friend with a second stop watch at the other end help time how long it took
for the stick to get to the other end.      If you divide the distance (
the length of the stream that you measured) by the time off  your stop
watch, you will have found the speed of the stream where the stick moved.