Winter’s Haven

In the course of my efforts to design an original theme for this blog, I went searching for snowflake photos; what I found was quite beyond what I had been looking for. Ken Libbrecht of Caltech has an amazing website devoted to the the physics of snowflakes and ice crystal formation. His lab does a lot of work growing artificial snowflakes to study how snowflakes form under different conditions (e.g. temperature, pressure, humidity). They can even create “designer” snowflakes by altering the conditions while a snowflake grows.

Naturally, the site has a wealth of pretty pictures (of both nature-made and lab-made snowflakes). There are also movies of snowflakes being grown under controlled conditions. The photo shown here is a snapshot of a snowflake being grown on top of an electrically-charged needle of ice, which can be seen (out of focus) in the background; the website explains the technique.

One last thing: a week ago the US Postal Service issued a set of stamps featuring Prof. Libbrecht’s photographs. Very cool.

This entry was posted 2006-Oct-13 and is filed under Aesthetics, Natural Sciences. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.