Way back in an entry I wrote in October 2006, I mentioned “ice bending” and indicated that I’d return to this subject. Well, here we are. In the previous entry, I mainly described ice bending as a hoax perpetrated by Aaron Costic. However, I wrote that despite’s Aaron’s trickery, ice bending really does occur. There was more than one example of real bending ice in Alaska and this time I have a bit of photo evidence.

    I first witnessed real ice bending at a competition that I think was in Harrisburg, PA. Aaron had carved a skier sculpture that he’d won events with a few times and the piece had thin ski poles with the baskets on the ends of the poles. The weight of the basket, combined with sunlight coming through a nearby window, was apparently causing one of the the poles to droop a bit, and the ice really was bending! This was something new to me and I was very surprised that ice could bend, albeit rather slowly.

    In Alaska this year, we’d looked at Junichi’s (and Taku Ito’s) first place sculpture (above) and wondered why the bug had been placed in front of other parts of the sculpture because it damaged the piece’s silhouette and made the bug hard to see. Later, without prompting by me, Aaron happened to mention that the chameleon’s tongue had bent because of the weight of the bug, which was the cause of the bug’s curious placement. Considering the source, I was understandably skeptical. In a separate conversation that included Heather Brice, Aaron, and myself, Aaron related to Heather that he could understand my skepticism, because I’d been burned before. Heather, however, came up with another example of ice bending, this time at the Aurora Ice Museum, which I was later able to visit and take a look at. Now that I’ve seen enough evidence, I now believe that I saw ice that had truly bent, but I still might not buy everything Aaron tries to sell me, especially around April 1st!

    Part of the “evidence” includes Junichi’s original sketch (below). You’ll notice that the bug is where it ought to be, out by itself, and not in front of other ice. More compelling evidence, however, is on Ice Alaska’s site, on the page for “Got You”. Rhonda Konicki took a photo earlier than I did, probably not long after the end of the event, and the bug looks to be higher, more in line with the sketch. The link on Ice Alaska’s site is bad, however, so it’s hard to find the full-size photo. I was able to reason out the correct address by looking at other photo addresses. The vantage points of Rhonda’s photo and my photo above are virtually identical, yet the bug is in a different spot in the later daytime photo. (Rhonda’s colored lighting shot also shows the bug in a lower spot, but the vantage point is slightly different.) The tongue has drooped, meaning the ice has bent!

“Got You” sketch; the “12” is the carving site number

    Heather Brice’s example also looked to be legitimate bending. At the Aurora Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs Resort, pieces stay in place for a long time and are only replaced as needed or if a decor change is undertaken. The jousting knights sculpture has evidently been in place for quite a while and the knights’ lances are slightly bent. The bending in the horizontal lance could be explained as a dynamic sculptural detail because the lance is striking the other knight, which in reality would make the lance bend. However, there’s a small support under the lance (not particularly visible in the photos below), which makes me think that the lance was sagging and the support was an effort to stop it. In the conversation with Aaron and myself, Heather specifically mentioned the vertical lance, which should not have a bend. She said it was slowly bending towards the wall of the museum and that was easy to see.

These ghostly images are of the jousting knights sculpture in the Aurora Ice Museum and illustrate some of the problems inherent in taking photos of ice (much of the light areas are overloaded). But the point of the photos is to illustrate the bending of the ice, which is clearly evident in the vertical, striped lance below as it bends towards the wall of the Aurora Ice Museum.

    So why don’t I set up an experiment to see if I can get ice to bend myself instead of relying on others’ examples? I nearly did in Alaska, but our weather difficulties and tough schedule made that a low priority. However, it’s the logical next step, so the next time I talk about ice bending, I’ll discuss the results of my efforts.

The following comment was on the original blog entry. After some technical difficulties, the blog had to be reconstructed, and this was the only way to keep the original comments.

Stephan.

Dawson,

I've bent ice in my shop before by placing weight at the end of a 1/2" thick slab...but that was above freezing.  It still surprises me that this phenomenon occurs below freezing.  Steve Brice mentioned this happened to the whiskers on his Ice Alaska tiger as well....don't know if you can tell in the photo. (i can't tell) http://www.icealaska.com/04/04mb/04mbdaily/04mb06.html

Sunday, March 16, 2008 - 12:21 AM