Glaciers Quiz

Gravity pulls glaciers downhill, making them move slowly.

Ice sheets are the largest type of glacier, covering areas greater than 50,000 square kilometers, such as those in Antarctica and Greenland.

The front edge of a glacier is called the terminus. It's also sometimes referred to as the snout, toe, or leading edge. The terminus is the lowest point of a glacier and the location where it either advances or retreats.

Glacier ice is blue because the red (long wavelengths) part of white light is absorbed by ice and the blue (short wavelengths) light is transmitted and scattered. The longer the path light travels in ice, the more blue it appears.

A moraine is material left behind by a moving glacier. This material is usually soil and rock.

The accumulation zone is where snow adds to the glacier.

The zone on a glacier where more ice melts than snow falls is called the ablation zone. In this zone, the glacier experiences a net loss of mass due to melting, evaporation, and calving, meaning more ice is lost than is gained through snowfall.

The fine powder created when glaciers grind rocks is called glacial flour or rock flour. It's a silt and clay-sized material that accumulates underneath and around glaciers. When mixed with water, glacial flour gives it a milky or turquoise appearance.

A crevasse is a deep, open crack that forms in the surface of a glacier due to stress from movement over uneven terrain.

Calving is the process where chunks of ice break off at the terminus of a glacier, often forming icebergs in coastal glaciers.