WOW! Here is a great example of the beauty of nature as reported in New Scientist. These photos were taken by Kenneth Libbrecht of CalTech, using a specially-designed snowflake photomicroscope. They show real snow crystals that fell to earth in northern Ontario, Alaska, Vermont, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.
This snowflake has fern-like stellar dendrites - the branches of the stellar crystals have so many side branches that they look like ferns.
These are the largest snow crystals, often falling to earth with diameters of 5mm or more. Despite their large size, these are single crystals of ice - the water molecules are lined up from one end to the other.
The best powder snow, where you sink to your knees while skiing, is made of stel
lar dendrites. These crystals can be extremely thin and light, so they make a low-density snowpack.Scientist are also creating a tool which shows how humidity and temperature effect the type of snowflake that is created. You can see this in the photo to the right.
1 comments:
Science is incredible. I just learned so much...incredible. English has poems about snow and science knows all about it. Whichever, it's all great!
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