A few days ago I talked briefly about thermal vortexes forming domains in coffee cups. People may think that I’m crazy, but for me there is something very reassuring about physical phenomena in everyday life.  You see something strange, something really cool, and then you recognize the fundamental science behind it.  That is very cathartic.  All is right with the universe and Newton’s equations.  Often it is cool enough to warrant a few photographs.

Today I was out for a walk, looking down, and I suddenly saw these little shadows appearing and scooting under the melting ice.  It was really neat, and I realized that what I was looking at were little pools of water collecting and then looking oh so like living things. Yet it isn’t magic, just driven on by a combination of gravity and surface tension.  There were visions adncing through my head of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park seductively explaining Chaos Theory to Laura Dern.

So I pulled out my ever ready IPhone 6 and took a little movie of the phenomenon for you.  How’s that for high tech?  Some of you may recognize that this is not all that dissimilar from what are referred to as glacial eskers in geology.  These are rivers or streams that form under glacial ice as it melts and they leave behind gigantic trails of debris. They are common features of the New England landscape, which once was buried under a mile thick blanket of snow and ice.  I guess that this puts this years snowfall record in a different light.