What is frost or ice wedging?

Answer 1

Ice Wedging is when there is a little crack in a rock and water gets in it. The water freezes and breaks the crack even bigger (it expands when it turns to ice). Then it melts and more water gets in it. That freezes and breaks the rock up even more. It keeps doing that until the rock breaks.

Answer 2

ice wedging is when water or snow gets in a crack and has nowhere to go but it has to go some where so it expands and the crack gets larger! And soon after that crack expands enough that the piece of land falls off

I needed that definition thnx 11 - 15 - 10

Answer 3

Frost wedging is a form of mechanical weathering (that is, weathering that involves physical, rather than chemical change). Frost wedging is caused by the repeated freeze-thaw cycle of water in extreme climates. Most rocks have small cracks in them, called joints (or, tectonic joints). When it rains, rainwater seeps into these joints. As the day cools and temperatures at night drop below freezing, the water inside the joints freezes. As water freezes into ice, it expands. The expanding ice places pressure on the joints in the rock. Finally, when the pressure is too much, the joint expands. In some cases, the rock will split, though this usually happens after repeated freeze and thaws. As new water is added during the warmer days, more ice is created at night, wedging the joints apart further.

Answer 4

Ice Wedging is when there is a little crack in a rock and water gets in it. The water freezes and breaks the crack even bigger (it expands when it turns to ice). Then it melts and more water gets in it. That freezes and breaks the rock up even more. It keeps doing that until the rock breaks.

Answer 5

I have never heard of ice wedging. However there are two properties of water that could have a wedging effect: 1. When you freeze water it expands as it becomes ice. You could pour water into a space and let it freeze. -The expansion would not be huge, but the process could be repeated over and over to expand a crack dramatically. This happens often in nature.

2. Water that is heated very quickly will expand into water vapor (steam). The same basice process above is followed, gradually the opening gets bigger. The is an ancient rock quarrying technique. They would have a large fire by the rock face and pour relatively small amounts of water into the crack that they were expanding. - Hopefully this helps. :) PS. Here's what I just found on Wikipedia: An ice wedge is a crack in the ground formed by a narrow or thin piece of ice that measures anywhere from 3 to 4 meters wide and extends downwards into the ground up to 10 inches. During the winter months, the water in the ground freezes and expands. Once temperatures reach -17 degrees Celsius or colder, the ice that has already formed acts like a solid and contracts to form cracks in the surface known as ice wedges. As this process continues over many years, ice wedges can grow up to the size of a swimming pool.

Answer 6

it's when water seeps into cracks of rocks and freezes. When it freezes, it expands, and makes the crack larger. After that it thaws. After multiple actions of freezing and thawing, it will eventually break apart.

Answer 7

Ice wedging occurs when water seeps into a crack and freezes. When frozen, the water expands and forces the crack further apart.

Answer 8

An example of ice wedging is when ice freezes over a rock and then adds so much pressure that it cracks the rock in many places.

Answer 9

you don't want to know.