On very warm still days, a thin surface layer may store heat before a mixing episode transfers heat downward.
They're ready when they've developed a thin surface covering of white ash, and then you bank them up to the edges of your kettle.
A granite disc, glazed with a thin surface of running water, would sit under a circular opening in the canopy roof.
In addition, most tundra and polar barrens are underlain by soils that are permanently frozen (permafrost) except for a thin surface zone (active layer) that thaws each summer.
Most of them occur in a thin surface layer, with a few anaerobic bacteria in the hydrogen sulfide zone (which otherwise is lifeless).
Again, supercooling of this magnitude is not observed in most naturally occurring waters, although some researchers argue that a thin surface layer of water may achieve such supercooling under high rates of heat loss.
For many years, it was known that the vessels of arctic expeditions often became almost trapped, making headway only with difficulty in what was called dead water, a phenomenon now recognized as internal waves along the boundary between a thin surface layer of relatively fresh water (a characteristic of polar seas) and the underlying saltier water.
A similar functional form of smoothing can arise from ion-induced viscous flow in a thin surface layer [24, 25].
For polymeric luminophors, the fluorescent light mostly appears in a thin surface layer without participation of the polymer in volume.
It is found that asymmetrical hydrodynamics condition and imperfect crystallographic shape can induce generation of a thin surface layer.
Before the ice melting begins (e.g., 1.2 Myr in Fig. 9), the temperature is almost constant with radius, with the exception of a thin surface region.
