Could Turning Icebergs Pose a Threat to Shipping?

[Himal kharel]

We can easily calculate that 89.5% of an iceberg is submerged. Yet occasionally icebergs turn over with possibly disastrous results to nearby shipping. How can this happen consudering so much of their mass is below sea level?

 

[xts]

See it yourself:

Take a glass of water (or - better- your favourite drink...), and put into it a single, possibly strange-shaped chunk of ice.

Drink it only after your micro-iceberg turns!

The ice-chunk (ice-berg) melts at different speed in various places - usually it melts faster in its underwater part. So the centre of its buoyance moves differently than centre of its mass - from time to time changing stable equilibrium into unstable one.