WHAT IS AN ICEBERG?

WHAT IS AN ICEBERG?

An iceberg is a great piece of ice floating in the sea. ‘Berg’ is the German word for ‘mountain.’ In the coldest parts of the earth, around the North and South Poles, land and sea are both covered by layers of ice, more than 300 meters deep at the centre.

Tongues of ice, called glaciers, stretch out into the open sea. The sea water melts the bottom parts of these glaciers, then, the top part moves into the water with a great noise. The great piece of ice sinks for a short time under the surface, then, it rises again and floats away as a new iceberg. Some icebergs are many miles long, and travel for thousands of miles and several years before they finally melt. The part of an iceberg which can be seen above the water is only about one-ninth of the total size. The rest is hidden under the waves.

One of the world’s worst disasters at sea was in 1912 when the liner ‘Titanic’ hit an iceberg and sank on her first journey, killing hundreds of passengers.

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