Chester County - Seymour Digital Consulting, LLC

Bartram Covered Bridge (1860)

Newtown Square, Chester Count [38-15-17]

Built in 1860, Bartram Covered Bridge is located just off of Goshen Road about 2½ miles West of Route 252 in Newtown Square, Chester County PA.

It is not recommended to park on the side of Goshen Road itself, because many people drive to fast in this section of the road, but there is some road side parking available on Boot Road.

I had been driving past this bridge for years and never stopped to doing anything about it, until today.

The beautiful late “Indian Summer” weather, combined with the cold nights have cause a very vibrant and colorful Fall foliage surrounding the bridge.

The bridge crosses over Crum Creek, and there is a small area for kids to run around, or a blanket picnic, as well as a few benches and rocks to sit on.

When you approach the bridge from the park area, you will notice the free-standing main bridge information plaque. As you get closer to the bridge, the next sign that you will see attached to the bridge, is National Register of Historic Places plaque.

Bartram Covered Bridge – Main Sign

Bartram Covered Bridge – NRHP plaque

One can not walk into the middle of the bridge, because there are metal security bars covering both entrance ways from top to bottom, but as you look more closely through the bars, you can see some holiday string lights attached to the long side walls.

Bartram-Goshen Covered Bridge (Long Exterior View) (Fall)

This picture was taken on the opposite side of Crum Creek from where you can park, and to reach it, you have to walk around the bridge, and into the woods, then down by the water.

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Tech Talk

All images were taken with a Canon XTi on a Bogen (Model 3020) tripod with a Canon Remote Switch RS-60E3, using the native 16-bit Camera Raw (cr2) format. The ISO Speed was set to 100.

Images were then transferred to a Microsoft Windows XP (SP-3) based computer and converted into Adobe DNG format, with additional processing done with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

These Inverted Icicles, also referred to as Ice Spikes, were amazing!

We have been watching them grow over the past several days, and when we heard the temperatures were going to be too warm for them to survive, I had to grab my camera to record what we saw.

Overview - Inverted Icicles/Ice Spikes 01 — Overview – Inverted Icicles/Ice Spikes 01

As you can see, these Inverted Icicles/Ice Spikes, were grown on the under-side of a 100-gallon horse troth, that we use in the summer, as a deck pond.

The troth had been up-side down for well over a month, and ‘Mother Nature’ dropping leaves, water and what ever else into the various sections of the horse troth under-side.

During the past couple of days, the highs were in the twenties, and the area was struck with direct sun for 4-5 hours.

At night, the temperatures would easily drop into teens.

There is no roof or over-hang, and the tree branches are too far way to be this consistent.

Overview - Inverted Icicles/Ice Spikes 02 — Overview – Inverted Icicles/Ice Spikes 02

From the Overview images, the tall ones are easily over 2 inches “tall”, but there is obvious variations in shape:

I can understand, to a degree, the vertical oriented icicle/spikes, but these?

I am very baffled in how the angled icicles/spikes are able to grow, and in such perfect form, especially, when one would suspect that they would droop over…

And what about the secondary “buds”?

Updates/Thoughts

Since I originally captured these images, I have been searching for an explanation to this phenomenon.

Distilled Water (Man-Made)

From my cited references below, icicles/spikes are generally “grown” in controlled conditions, using “Distilled Water”; a flash freeze process; in ice-cube trays, and seems to be easily repeatable.

Nature-Made

On the other hand, and less well reported, are the Natural icicles/spikes that do occur, in bird baths or other small bowl-shaped objects. Some examples can be found on “Got Spikes on Your Ice Cubes?”.

When looking at the captures on this page, note the clarity and translucency of the ice, which would seemingly demonstrate the cold temperatures involved.

Size and Shapes

Refrigerator grown icicles/spikes, it seems, tend to be very thin and around 2 inches in length, and the images provided, easily show that these icicles/spikes are over that mark. [Note to self – Need to work out actual sizes]

Impurities

As for the impurities issue, using Distilled Water versus Not, images on this page do not seem to show any impurities as the focus of structure formation.

Measuring Age

If I were to guesstimate an ‘age’ for these ice shapes, 3-5 days, based on looking the air bubble paths.

If one looks carefully, there does appear to be a larger repeating bubble ‘chamber’ along the path of the escaping air.

I suggest that the ‘chamber’ is a result of an extreme cold state, corresponding to a chilling/warming cycle, and would normally seem to occur during the day time hours, or when exposed to warming temperatures.

Static Electricity

It seems in a majority of cases, a plastic compound seems to be the main sub-straight.

I have to wonder if there is an influence of some sort of electrical discharge, in the colder, drier environments that effect that shape.

As for the shaping of the check-mark shapes, consider the idea, that the ‘buds’ are a back-follow condition of the primary side.

Reference

What are your thoughts?

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