OT: Ice doesn't get the respect it deserves

Robert Green · 2011-02-18T08:30:29+00:00

In the past few months we've seen some incredible ice-caused disasters fromroof collapses to massive traffic accidents. While I'll go out in the snowwhen necessary, a huge 2" thick sheet of ice that flew off a car in front ofme and shattered my windshield at 70 mph "learned me" that ice was somethingto respect.Hope you got a chance to see the super-cooled liquid water demonstration onNova. As has been noted before, very pure water can be cooled way below 32degF and when you thrust a metal rod into a bottle of it, it freezes withina few seconds. Their experts proposed such ice could form in the pitot tube(airspeed detector) on flight 447 and so quickly that the de-icers might notbe able to overcome it. What's really scary is that Airbus was gettingreports of at least 1 failure a week of the pitot.When the pitot fails, the automatic pilot immediately shuts down. Even withtwo backup pitot sensors, 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and someinvestigators believe that the tubes got filled with super-cooled water andthe heaters could not compensate. Tests have shown that pilots often don'treact in time to regain control of a plane that's stalled on autopilotbecause of the bad readings. The program also noted that with the extensiveuse of autopilots, modern aviators don't have the experience needed to copewith badly "out of whack" flight situations.Ice is believed to have helped sink the USS Thresher. When some brazedjoints failed, ballast blow valves outputs that were "caged" for protectionformed ice due to venturi cooling and prevented the sub from gainingpositive bouyancy and surfacing caused the O rings on the Challenger to fail: the Titanic was no match for a mountain of frozen water.I'll be glad when the last of it disappears. I think we've seen the last ofit for a while in the DC area, but this time of year is tricky and canproduce some seriously deadly storms. In Buffalo, the snow and ice wouldoften go into May. )-:--Bobby G.

Feb 18, 2011 62 Replies

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gpsman 15 years ago

How do you want to define motorist? A guy on foot who was previously motoring, and/or may motor later...? -----

- gpsman

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Harry K 15 years ago

snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

So when driving in traffic you _never_ expect anyone to touch the brake, slow down a bit, change lanes? That is why a good driver maintains a reasonable followign distance, 2 seconds is about right, to allow for such normal occurances. A good driver will also slow momentarily to re-estalish his followign distance. Must be nice driving in _your_ universe.

Harry K

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