Welcome back, geoadvent fans! After 11 months of baking, knitting, geologising and youtubing, we are turning over the geolsoc blog, once again, to four weeks of festive geological musings.

For those of you who missed out on the 2013 inaugural blog season, or want to reminisce about that time we photoshopped a Christmas Puddingstone, all of last year’s posts can be found here…

Competition!

Before we kick off, a note about the windows – which this year are all taken from our list of 100 Great Geosites. The first person to correctly identify the site pictured each day will win a point towards our Ultimate Geoadvent Prize! (Not entirely defined yet, but it may well feature some/any/all of the below…) Just leave a comment below to enter.

For day one, we present our favourite video clips featuring ice – because it’s cold out there, and it’s only going to get chillier….

Iceberg flipping over

You can just about hear the roar over the sounds of bemused tourists….

Lava vs Ice

The Syracuse Lava Project uses ‘the natural beauty and particular properties of lava’ to produce sculptures, experiments and outreach events. And a series of strangely addictive videos, including attempts to recreate pillow lava, and cook four large steaks over lava. In this video, they answer that most time honoured of questions – what happens when you pour lava onto ice?

Too close for comfort

If you have ever doubted the power of a calving glacier, doubt it no longer…

Those are our favourites – let us know if you have any! (Unless they’re an ice bucket challenge…)