Friday, 25 May, 2012

If you saw something like this falling from the sky, you might think that the weather outside was indeed frightful. But this dumbbell shaped object is, in fact, a super-magnified snowflake — yes, a snowflake. Not so frightful after all. This particular snowflake is a capped column, one of many types of snowflakes. The fuzzy [...]

Do all snowflakes have unique shapes? It is highly unlikely that you’ll find two identical snowflakes. Feel free to try to prove us wrong, but your search may involve some cold feet! If you compared 1 million snowflakes (a minuscule fraction of the flakes in a single snowstorm), performing two comparisons per second, you’d need [...]

Why does snow sometimes sparkle? Photo of snow in west Sierra Nevada by Itrovert Sometimes on a sunny day, freshly fallen snow may appear to sparkle or glitter. This happens because when light hits an object light, it can be absorbed, in which case the object is heated; transmitted, in which case light passes through [...]

The curious growth of a snow crystal Temperature and humidity affects the shape of snowflake crystals. The temperature of formation determines the original crystal shape. Large (“dendritic”) flakes grow best between -10° and -12° C. Plates grow at warmer or colder conditions. Humidity — water vapor pressure in the cloud — affects the growth rate [...]

New snowflake generator reveals nature’s design principles; anti-reflective coating is nearly perfect, and so is mother-of-pearl inside an abalone. Dive into the nitty gritty of the itty bitty!

Frosty questions: Are some snowflakes identical? How do flakes form, and how does weather affect their shape? How does ice in the atmosphere affect weather and climate? And where does the jet stream fit in this picture?

One fact we know from childhood: every snowflake is unique. Isn’t it? UW-Madison’s snowflake expert, meteorology professor Pao Wang, gently delivered the grim news: “Not really. I think the saying is more or less a picturesque way of saying that there are so many varieties of snowflakes, thousands of different kinds.” Wang studies how snow [...]