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raphinou a day ago

I would have thought it would generate enormous wave, but that's clearly not the case. I think some of the biggest waves was generated by a mountain sliding or collapsing in the sea. I expected something similar here. Anyone know why not?

GuB-42 a day ago | parent | next [-]

It is not a very energetic event for its size. The iceberg is floating, it can't accumulate a lot of potential energy before flipping, so when it happens, there is not enough to make big waves. The center of gravity of the iceberg barely moves.

A mountain sliding into the sea is different, these higher up rocks have a lot of potential energy, that convert into kinetic energy as they fall, which is transferred to the water as they splash down, making big waves.

tlavoie a day ago | parent [-]

Here's an excellent example of the latter, from a short ways up the BC coast from me. Not caught on film, but found later by heli pilots, and on seismic data: https://hakai.org/stories/the-big-slide

cucumber3732842 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The amount of water actually being displaced isn't changing much, it's just kind of rearranging around where is water and where is ice.

javier2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i suppose its not actually displacing a lot of water volume, unlike a landslide.

staplers a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All its mass is already on the water so it's not displacing anything. It probably made some splashes but it seems like a fairly round object rotating rather than smashing into anything

dist-epoch a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe because ice floats, and it's almost the same density as water?