An iceberg is a great piece of ice floating in the sea. ‘Berg’ is the German word for ‘mountain.’ In the
coldest parts of the earth, around the North and South Poles, land and sea are both covered by layers of ice, more than 300 metres deep at the centre.
Tongues of ice, called glaciers, stretch out into the open sea. The sea water melts the bottom parts of these glaciers, then the top part moves into the water with a great noise. The great piece of ice sinks for a short time under the surface, then it rises again, and floats away as a new iceberg. Some icebergs are many miles long, and travel for thousands of miles and several years before they finally melt. The part
of an iceberg which can be seen above the water is only about one-ninth of the total size. The rest is hidden underthe waves.
One of the world’s worst disasters at sea was in 1912 when the liner ‘Titanic’ hit an iceberg and sank on her first journey, killing hundreds of passengers.
Questions
- What is an iceberg?
- What is ‘berg’?
- What is ‘glaciers’?
- Where is most part of an iceberg?
- How does the writer describe the North andSouth Poles?
- What is ‘liner’?
- What happened to the Titanic?
- Why did the author write about iceberg?
- How is an iceberg formed?
- Describe how an iceberg looks in your own words.