If you guessed, looking at the picture below, you might say making fancy lampshades, but you would be wrong. We could allow more guesses but suspect coming up with the right answer is beyond most of us. What we are looking at are buoys designed to measure the flow of Antarctic pack ice. In action they are flipped over with the broad side up. The unusual cone shape is intended to make the buoys pop up (rather than being crushed or submerged) when blocks of ice crash together. So far it has worked – there are a number of these buoys in action.
