Abstract
THE sea tide has been measured at the Trans-Antarctic Expedition's Shackleton Base, on the Filchner Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea. The ice shelf is afloat over some 500 fathoms of water, and is not thought to be aground anywhere within at least 15 miles; the nearest known land is more than 20 miles to the east. In the absence of any fixed point to which the tide could be referred, a Worden gravimeter was used as an altimeter. The gravimeter was placed in a cavern dug 18 ft. below the snow surface, and photographs automatically taken through the eyepiece every hour. A ten-minute exposure was used so as to average out the continual movement produced by unsteadiness of the ice shelf. The Worden is normally used by adjusting a micrometer head until a pointer seen through the eyepiece is in its zero position; in this work the micrometer was left untouched for many days at a time, and the displacement as photographed through the eyepiece was converted into a correction to the constant setting. In this way readings were obtained from August 8 until October 3, 1957. 145 readings were missed, mostly in the early stages and mainly in two big gaps; these were due to my carelessly dropping a key into the works when reloading the camera, and so fusing the lamp.
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References
Coguel, Jean, “Geophysical Prospecting”, 4, Supp. 1 (1956).
Doodson, A. T., and Warburg, H. D., “The Admiralty Tide Tables”, Part 3 (1936).
Roberts, Brian, and Corkan, R. H., British Graham Land Expedition 1934–37 Scientific Reports, 1, No. 8.
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PRATT, J. The Tide at Shackleton. Nature 182, 1394 (1958). https://doi.org/10.1038/1821394a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1821394a0
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