When a frozen glacier meets ocean water, often the two interact in ways that cause the terminus—the end point of the glacier— to calve, or shed, huge chunks of ice directly into the ocean as icebergs.

I soon learned that there are a lot of glaciers to study! Today, there are hundreds of thousands of glaciers worldwide.

Some glaciers are huge. We have ice sheets that are roughly the size of the U.S. states of Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey combined! Today, only two ice sheets exist in the world—in Greenland and Antarctica. Here are some of my favorite icy landforms.

There are many other types of glaciers. Valley glaciers wind through mountains and erode rocks, carving out steep, U‑shaped valleys. There are tidewater glaciers. These are glaciers that flow into the ocean.

Piedmont glaciers flow from steep mountain areas onto flat areas. When the ice moves into the flat area, it stretches out into huge crescent shapes. There are tiny glaciers called glacierets. There are mysterious glaciers called rock glaciers that are made out of rock and ice fused together. There are so many other types of glaciers, and no two are alike.