Talk:Crevasse

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The section on crevasse types needs some attention from someone who understands solid mechanics. Consider, for instance, the following statement:

Longitudinal crevasses form parallel to flow where the glacier width is expanding. They develop in areas of compressive stress, such as where a valley widens.

As an engineer, I believe this is simply not true. Compressive stresses by themselves cannot cause a fissure to open, nor do they form when a valley widens. The stresses form in narrow spots, when the valley walls push in on the ice and compress it. When the valley opens up, the stresses are released. If the bottom of the glacier is more stressed than the surface (easy to imagine), it will expand more, and pull apart the surface layers.

--Smack (talk) 01:41, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've actually never really heard the term longitudinal crevasses in the literature, specifically in Nye's seminal paper on crevasse patters where he describes the relevant stress tensors. According to him, there is only splaying and transverse. I think what the above writer was trying to say, was that "width expanding" is equal to lateral extension, whereas compressive stress is longitudinal, often seen at the terminus of the glacier. Under compressive stress you'll see splaying crevasses, which do approach a longitudinal orientation eventually.

Rebwilli (talk) 04:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a crevice is "a narrow opening resulting from a split or crack (as in a cliff)" and a crevasse is "!. a breach in a levee 2. a deep crevice or fissure (as in a glacier or the earth)". So the very first sentence of this article seems to be inaccurate, since crevasse is basically being defined as a deep crevice, and the definition of crevasse includes both ice and "earth."

Quanderous (talk) 14:22, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why it is happen 42.201.129.47 (talk) 06:46, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In my opnion Wikipedia thrives to be scientifical and precise. All scientists around the world exclusevely use the metric system, the imperil measure units are not used and are considered outdated. I notice ultimately that in many articles including the current one measures are given in feets, the metric equivalent is not even mentioned. I also noticed temperatures given in Farenheit, and after that in Celsius. I would like to stress that the default mode should be metric/celsius, and the imperial/farenheit the aditional and optional, if at all included. This should be valid also for articles from countries where the imperial system is prevalent: the metric system is the only one used in science. What is going on? 2A02:1210:526B:B700:A808:672D:7A49:3137 (talk) 03:56, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has a guideline for this, see MOS:UNITS. For this article, metric units should come first and imperial units can parenthesized. — hike395 (talk) 04:43, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]