Jonathan Eisch’s Weblog

Hi All,

Today, our major task was to cut away some insulation from the sides of one of the tanks, in order to get it to freeze faster. The reason that the insulation is there in the first place, is to ensure that the ice forms top down. however, after nine tenths of a meter of ice has formed, the ice acts as such a good insulator (like on a lake) that the rest of the water takes a very long time to freeze. We don’t have a long time, as we are trying to get the water frozen as soon as possible. We want the water frozen by now because John Kelley, from UW-Madison, just arrived to start the next phase of the detector setup; connecting the detectors on the top of the ice to the data acquisition system. In order for him to test his connection, we will need to make the tank light tight, which will make any remaining freeze take even longer. Hopefully the insulation that we removed will help the freezing process move along.

That’s the good news. The bad news, is that I’m supposed to leave the pole on the 5th. I’d prefer to stay longer, but that’s not what’s got me a bit down. What I am disappointed about is that I’d leave here on the 5th to go to McMurdo, but my plane from McMurdo to Christchurch doesn’t leave until the 9th. That means that I have to spend four nights at McMurdo. It’s not so much that McMurdo is bad, it’s just that it’s not as cool as the pole, and I won’t know anyone, because it’s just a stepping stone for IceCube people like me, to go to and from the pole. So, I’m going to request to stay here longer, to try to help out John. We’ll see how that goes.

In other news, I’ve gotten a lot better with my yo-yo.

-Jonathan

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2003 at 3:14 am and is filed under Pole 03-04. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.