Mondo Knows Facts
Glaciers flow downhill like very slow rivers
Ice deforms under its own weight, so a glacier keeps moving while staying solid Most glaciers creep forward at tens to hundreds of metres a year, and some surge far faster for a season. The ice slides on meltwater at the base and deforms internally like a very stiff fluid. Where the bed is uneven the surface cracks into crevasses as the faster ice stretches. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Antarctica holds Earth's largest single ice sheetIt covers the whole continent and holds roughly sixty per cent of the world's fresh waterGlaciers carry boulders far from their bedrockErratics are rocks dumped many miles from any outcrop of the same stoneFjords are glacial valleys that the sea floodedIce cut the valleys below sea level, and when it melted the ocean moved inPerito Moreno is one of few stable glaciersWhile most glaciers shrink, this one advances and dams a lake until the ice gives wayIce cores trap ancient air for studyBubbles sealed in glacier ice preserve samples of the atmosphere from thousands of years agoThe Rwenzori has glaciers almost on the equatorThese peaks on the Uganda and Congo border carry ice despite sitting within a degree of the Equator
🗺️ World Geographyfact 127 of 200
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Tags: glaciers, ice, physics
Glaciers flow downhill like very slow rivers: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Ice deforms under its own weight, so a glacier keeps moving while staying solid. The figure is taken from United Nations, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.