Zoom in on sea ice

Time for some adventure! We're going to take an exciting journey through the sea ice. We'll start by flying 20,000 m up in the air. As you zoom in closer and closer, we'll come crashing down to the surface of the ice. We won't stop there, though; you'll even get to go inside the ice. Usually, only scientists with high-tech equipment get to see the ice this closely. To continue your adventure, read the caption and then choose your destination.

This picture is 0.1 m (or 10 cm) across. It is a special piece of ice called a thin section. We start with a piece of ice and make it thinner and thinner and thinner until it is only 1 mm thick! Then we take a picture of it using a camera with a special filter called a polarizer. The polarizing filter makes different ice crystals in the thin section have different colors. We're so close to the ice now that it doesn't even look like normal ice! I wonder what happens if we zoom in even further?