Why is a large part of an iceberg under water though ice is lighter than water? Ice floats in water because it is lighter (less dense) than water, the medium in which it floats but with most part of the solid ice under water. This is simply because ice and water differ in their densities only in a small way.

Sea level is rising, in part, because melting glaciers on land are adding more water to Earth’s oceans. The volume of water they displace as ice is the same as the volume of water they add to the ocean when they melt. As a result, sea level does not rise when sea ice melts.

When you put an ice cube in a glass of water, filled up to the top what happens and why does it happen? Since the ice, when it floats, displaces exactly its weight in water, when it melts, the water it melts into takes the same volume that the ice cube displaced in the water. So the water level should remain the same.

Icebergs float, because their density is lower than the density of the water they’re floating in. With other words, they are not as heavy as sea water. But not all kinds of ice weigh the same.

Density also explains why most of an iceberg is found beneath the ocean’s surface. Because the densities of ice and sea water are so close in value, the ice floats “low” in the water. This means that ice has nine-tenths, or 90 percent of water’s density – and so 90 percent of the iceberg is below the water’s surface.

Ninety percent

Lurking iceberg. But sometimes in stormy weather or as an iceberg cleaves from the glacier—a process called “calving”—it flips. Or, as an iceberg drifts into warmer seas, the melting of its massive underbelly can throw it off balance, upending it.

The exact size of the iceberg will probably never be known but, according to early newspaper reports the height and length of the iceberg was approximated at 50 to 100 feet high and 200 to 400 feet long.

How old is glacier ice?

• The age of the oldest glacier ice in Antarctica may approach 1,000,000 years old.
• The age of the oldest glacier ice in Greenland is more than 100,000 years old.
• The age of the oldest Alaskan glacier ice ever recovered (from a basin between Mt. Bona and Mt. Churchill) is about 30,000 years old.

550 ft high

The largest iceberg ever reliably documented was approximately 31,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi) – making it larger than Belgium. It was 335 km (208 mi) long and 97 km (60 mi) wide and was sighted 240 km (150 mi) west of Scott Island, in the Southern Ocean by the USS Glacier on 12 November 1956.

The iceberg, measuring around 170 kilometres (105 miles) long and 25 kilometres wide, with an area of 4,320 square kilometres is now floating in the Weddell Sea.

Icebergs that drift into warmer waters eventually melt. Scientists estimate the lifespan of an iceberg, from first snowfall on a glacier to final melting in the ocean, to be as long as 3,000 years.

Image via ESA. An enormous iceberg – named A-76 – is now the biggest iceberg on Earth. The berg broke off from the western side of Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea. The huge iceberg measures about 1,668 square miles (4,320 square km) in size.

The average weight for a Grand Banks-area iceberg is 100,000-200,000 tonnes – about the size of a cubic 15-story building.

Iceberg located in Ross Sea, Antarctica. To be classified as an iceberg, the height of the ice must be greater than 16 feet above sea level and the thickness must be 98-164 feet and the ice must cover an area of at least 5,382 square feet .

After several trips back to the drawing board, it turns out that raising the Titanic would be about as futile as rearranging the deck chairs on the doomed vessel. After a century on the ocean floor, Titanic is apparently in such bad shape it couldn’t withstand such an endeavor for a variety of reasons.