Clear Ice
Last week, a video of a man walking on ice went viral. Tomas Nunuk of Bratislava, Slovakia posted a video on YouTube of him and his friend hiking near the border of Slovakia and Poland. They found Veľké Hincovo pleso, which is a lake that is frozen for over 250 days of the year, and decided to walk across it. The video shows the ice looking as clear as glass. Comments on youtube believed that the video was fake because the ice was so clear. The ice in the video is congelation ice, which is known as black ice to most because you can see through the water underneath. This particular ice develops under an existing layer of ice, adding off of the bottom. The clear layer is seen when the top layer is melted. The clearness is achieved when it freezes with no air bubbles, snow, and extraneous factors. When air bubbles, snow, etc… are present then it causes the light to spread when it goes through and causes the cloudy look. The ice is pretty strong though the ice Tomas and his friend were walking on was 53 meters (174 feet).
