How "cool" is this? Another role from Antarctica this time the South Pole. This roll comes from my daughter's next door neighbor, Chris. He works for the UWMadison and has been to Antarctica several times working on specialized ice drills. This time it was in connection with the ARA (Askaryan Radio Array) project that is an extremely large detector under construction near the South Pole. ARA is designed to detect and measure high-energy neutrinos from spacey observing the radio pulses they generate as they pass through the ice.
They will be drilling arrays of 5 holes each 200m deep and then placing detectors in each hole. The groups are arranged in a hexagon pattern with 2km between each array for a total of 185 holes. No small feat considering the weather conditions.
In a nut shell. The drill looks like this and uses hot water to drill an 8" diameter hole over 600 feet deep.
This is the reel that holds the 600 + feet of hose that delivers hot water to the drill. The reel was so large that it had to be designed to be tilted 45 degree so it can fit into a C 130's cargo hold for the flight to the South Pole.
The entire Drill Rig needed to be built as a stand alone unit and was mounted to three sled for movement on the ice. Fuel and snow melter in the front. Generators and hydraulics in the middle and the reel in the back.
This is the kind of stuff Chris is working on and he thought about the World Duct Tape collection as he used roll after roll of this special pipe tape everyday drilling. He said it was the only tape they could fine that would stick to the wet and cold environment.
I spent a lot of time reading up on the ARA project and if you are interested and want to learn more about this project and process of drilling ice check out this link
ara.wipac.wisc.edu/home
Collecting Duct Tape has helped me learn many new things about the world that I never imagined. Collect a roll for the collection I don't have, send it to me and I will send you one of these 1 of 200 engraved challenge coins for your effort. I will also post your story of getting the role on the blog.
If you want to know all the countries already in the collection click on the link for the latest list
ducttape2thefuturelist.blogspot.com. Happy collecting
