Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Orange Shots.
The earth is round.
Or at least spherical in shape.
We call it a spheroid.
What that means is, near the equator,
the distance between the parallel longitudes
slowly decreases
if you go north or south.
If you calculate the distance between two longitudes near the equator,
and if you go to Russia or Australia,
and calculate the distance between them,
you'll notice the difference.
That's entirely due to the shape of the earth.
And by the way, the Earth has two poles,
the North Pole and the South Pole.
This also means that if we go to the North or South Pole,
the distances decrease significantly.
I'm going to give very vague figures,
I'm not giving the exact distances
and we're not calculating the distance at any specific speed.
But if a plane travels from Russia to Norway
in 27-28 days, and if we talk any region with warm waters;
if that same plane takes the Northern Sea route,
or the North, it will reach Norway in 4 days.
How strange is that?
Due to the earth's shape
the distances in the North get shorter.
They are very short.
And if you go to the North Pole, and reach the South Pole,
just by moving a few meters,
you can complete a 180 degrees distance of the earth.
This is pretty fascinating.
By the way, I just remembered an incident.
A 90-year-old woman celebrated her 90th birthday
90 degrees towards the North, i.e., the North Pole.
And you know what she did there?
She walked in a circle twice and complete two rounds.
Only a few steps.
And in those two rounds,
she basically completed two rounds around the earth.
This is fascinating too. And the lady really enjoyed herself.
Anyway, coming back to the main point.
There's another issue with the North and South Pole,
and it's not really an issue, more of a characteristic of the Earth.
There's ice on both poles.
We call them ice caps.
The North and South pole are completely covered in ice.
90 degrees North, and 90 degrees South,
are where you get 1 day and 1 night per year (365 days).
The daytime lasts 6 months,
and nighttime lasts 6 months as well.
But then,
what's so perplexing is that
if distances are decreased in the North,
why did Russia and China, for so many years, in order to export goods to Europe,
take the South China Sea, North China Sea, Indian Ocean, Suez Canal,
Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea routes?
They'd take 27-28 days, and if the ships were slower,
it would even take them five weeks.
A lot of money was also being spent,
just for the ships to reach Europe. Right?
Why didn't they take the Northern Sea route?
It would've taken them 5 days instead of 5 weeks.
The reason behind this is the Northern Pole, and the Northern Sea ice cap.
It extends to Iceland, towards the coast of Russia.
Sea ice extending all the way to Russia meant
the sea routes being closed 8 months a year.
They barely opened for the remaining 4 months.
Ships weren't even that strong back then.
They're strong now, strong enough to brave the seas.
Yes, it's true.
But normally built ships - not ice class ships,
I'll come back to those later -
ships built for warm waters cannot run on ice.
Because when a ship passes through ice,
it feels like it's hailing the whole time.
If you live in Lahore or Delhi, or the Northern Areas especially,
you must've heard what hailstorms sound like. With big hailstones.
It feels like someone's throwing rocks at your car.
I've even seen dents on cars caused by hailstones.
Now, imagine big ice pieces hitting a ship hard,
what would happen to the ship?
They can literally break a ship completely.
But with the passage of time, things started improving.
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How did things start to improve?
Even if we skip talking about the northern cap for now,
and talk about the north of the North sea,
There's ice here too.
So to deal with this type of ice, they make ice ships
these types of ships can tackle around 10 cm of ice.
When our ship passed through that ice, it was a long time ago.
I didn't make videos back then,
so I don't have footage.
But when our ship was passing through 10 cm thick ice,
we could hear loud thudding sounds, with ice flying around.
That was fascinating to watch.
But that was a step in the bright direction because
in this day and age, time is money, and everyone wants to save money.
Whether it's actual money or time.
If you're receiving both benefits,
ship owners will do anything to save any of them.
If you take the Northern Sea route, you save both time and money.
But wasn't the Northern Sea route closed most of the time?
But with time, progress was made
and now we use icebreakers.
They (literally) pave the way for other ships to pass through the Northern Sea route,
travelling from Russia to Europe, and vice versa.
Icebreakers clear ice, making way for other ships to pass through.
Although some pieces of ice do remain,
but they're weak enough for the ships to pass over or around them.
These ships follow after the icebreakers, crossing through the Northern Sea route.
This way, an otherwise year-long trip is cut short.
And during the months the ice is thinner, these same icebreakers
take tourists to the North Pole,
show them around.
And the people who want to celebrate their birthdays there
do just that.
One question that arises is if normal ships aren't powerful enough,
to break the ice there, how do icebreakers do it?
Here's the thing, you don't need a big ship to break the ice.
Nor do you need a ship that could get stuck in the ice while clearing it.
You also don't need a small ship. It won't be able to do anything.
You need a particular size, not too small, not too large,
that has the manoeuvrability to deal with all conditions.
A ship that doesn't get stuck in ice.
A ship strong enough to break thick ice.
It is a bit of a balance between both.
Also, I also want to remind you that if you haven't subscribed, yet,
this is the right time to click on the red button.
I don't want to keep repeating this,
but that's the name of the game these days.
Now, let's take this icebreaker for example.
This is an Antarctic-class icebreaker. It came into service in 1989.
The ship is approx. 152 m long.
Its width is 32 m.
Its draft (the area below water) is approx. 11 m.
Its total depth is 70 m.
This is a middle-sized ship, which is ideal.
If we talk about its displacement,
its approx. 23,000 tons.
This ship is almost perfect for breaking all types of ice.
But it being an icebreaker doesn't mean it won't ever get stuck in ice.
This is not entirely possible.
But before going into those details, let me tell you a bit more about the ship.
The ship has three nuclear reactors installed,
and three main engines,
meaning, ships are normally single-screw ships.
They have one propellor, the icebreaker in question has three.
it also has three nuclear reactors.
Now, coming to its power,
one reactor or one engine on this ship can produce approx. 25,000 hp.
Combine the three and you get 75,000 hp.
For the tours this ship completes from Russia to the North Pole and back
it consumes fuel the size of a chocolate bar.
And now that you know this sort of ship has three nuclear reactors installed,
it obviously produces a lot of steam.
For that steam to escape, there are three large holes on the ship's bottom.
Steam passes out of those holes pretty fast.
All this extra steam also helps weaken the ice around the ship.
I haven't come to the icebreaking part just yet.
When a ship faces resistance while running,
in this case, ice,
It's important for the ship's bow to be strengthened.
Because that's the part that "fights" ice.
When the icebreaker tackles ice,
it breaks it in two ways.
If you've seen this ship's bow or any ship's bow for that matter.
It's triangular in shape.
It looks like it has an edge, or a knife.
If the ice is thin, the icebreaker tears right through.
Cake-sized bits break apart.
Just as the ice gets thicker,
they get broken into smaller, cake-sized bits.
Now, on to the thickest of ice.
It's called "sheet ice".
It's actually several feet underwater.
Icebreakers can actually break around 10-15 feet of ice.
Sometimes, the ice can be deeper.
It's even around 30 feet around the North Pole.
Icebreakers can't tear through ice thicker than 5 feet,
and that's where its power comes to use.
It's 25,000 hp engines
help the ship go full force.
The icebreaker's bow lifts upwards and hits the ice like a hammer.
Sometimes, an icebreaker has to go at ice 32 times to break it.
Now, that's why a ship's bow has to be strong.
Not only does it have to deal with the ice flying at it,
it also has to act as a hammer, hitting at the ice in full force.
Where do the engines on these ships get such power.
If you aren't familiar with nuclear reactors yet,
they're the normal way electricity is generated.
Heat is generated, it heats up water,
that creates steam, and then the steam activates the turbines.
Icebreakers function the same way,
the reactor keeps running, producing steam.
The steam activates the turbines, which in turn rotates the propellors.
In essence, icebreakers work like knives,
tearing through the ice.
And when they encounter sheet ice, which is very thick,
they turn into hammers.
That's exactly how they break ice.
The advantages of these icebreakers are infinite.
Today's world is different. We don't really have wars anymore.
But the icebreakers built during those times still come in handy today.
Not only Russia has icebreakers, but America and Canada also have them too.
But by far, the most famous are the ones Russia uses.
And besides military work,
they also make way for expedition ships
so they can reach the North or South Pole.
Going to the North Pole is easier,
but the South Pole is a landmass.
That's where icebreakers come in, paving the way for other ships to pass through.
Then you actually have to walk, since the South Pole is a landmass.
If you want to know if the earth is flat or round,
I have a video about that linked here.
And if you want to me signing off from Russia,
the video about that is here.
Until my next video, take good care of yourselves.
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my Orange Shots family,
and to-be Orange Shots family.
This is me Zahid Nisar.
You're watching Orange Shots.
And until my next video,
ALLAH Hafiz.