![]() Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at Caltech, has been studying and photographing the formation of snowflakes for more than two decades. If the humidity is especially high, they can even form into long needles or large thin plates. And the higher the humidity, the more complex the shape. Star-like shapes form at -2 degrees Celsius and -15 degrees Celsius, while columns form at -5 degrees Celsius and again at around -30 degrees Celsius. Thanks to Nakaya’s pioneering work, we know that certain atmospheric conditions, like temperature and humidity, can influence a snowflake’s shape. Watch a snowflake "grow" into an intricate crystal structure. Some 20 years later, Rene Descartes waxed poetical after observing much rarer 12-sided snowflakes, "so perfectly formed in hexagons and of which the six sides were so straight, and the six angles so equal, that it is impossible for men to make anything so exact." He pondered how such a perfectly symmetrical shape might have been created, and eventually arrived at a reasonably accurate description of the water cycle, adding that "they were obliged to arrange themselves in such a way that each was surrounded by six others in the same plane, following the ordinary order of nature." Advertisement The shapes of snowflakes and snow crystals have long fascinated scientists, like Johannes Kepler, who took some time away from his star-gazing in 1611 to publish a short paper entitled "On the Six-Cornered Snowflake." He was intrigued by the fact that snow crystals always seem to exhibit a six-fold symmetry. Branchings sprout out from the single crystals’ corners to form snowflakes of increasingly complex shapes. But that crystal also attracts more cooled water drops in the air. It's long been known that under certain conditions, water vapor can condense directly into tiny ice crystals, usually forming the shape of a hexagonal prism (two hexagonal "basal" faces and six rectangular "prism" faces). Snowflakes are the best known example of crystal growth, at least among the general populace. There’s also something very cool in creating a metallic snowflake!” “This is how nature makes nanoparticles, and is both less wasteful and much more precise than top-down methods. “In contrast to top-down approaches to forming nanostructure-by cutting away material-this bottom-up approaches relies on atoms self-assembling,” said co-author Nicola Gaston of University of Auckland. They described their results in a paper published earlier this month in the journal Science. Scientists in New Zealand and Australia were conducting atomic-scale experiments with various metals dissolved in liquid solvent of gallium when they noticed something unusual: different types of metal self-assembled into different shapes of crystals-with zinc creating tiny metallic snowflakes. Today: Scientists in New Zealand and Australia created tiny metallic snowflakes. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2022, each day from December 25 through January 5. The animals range from starfish to eagle, dog, green sea turtle and hammerhead shark to reindeer, hermit crab, lobster and tiger.There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. ![]() The designs are rated beginner, easy, intermediate and challenging. ![]() Snowflake cutting is a great craft idea for children or family fun, for teachers and their students, and other groups. The book also includes eight designs that are printed on colored paper, ready to be pulled out, folded and cut. Most of the shapes are meant to be photocopied, folded and cut along pre-printed guidelines to create the animal-themed snowflakes. Some are designed for children as young as age 3, while others are more challenging for the truly artistic adult. “100 Amazing Paper Animal Snowflakes” comes with templates for all ages and skill levels. She liked keeping her hands busy and was cutting traditional snowflakes for her Christmas tree, when suddenly she came up with the idea of incorporating the snowflake cutting with the animal shapes she was seeing on TV.įrom there, her animal-themed designs took off and grew into designs of all kinds - a viola or other musical instruments, initials - even silhouettes of people. Her animal snowflake papercutting came to her one evening while watching a nature program on television. ![]() ![]() A storyteller, as well as a snowflake maker, Nichols regales patrons at her Snowflake Station in the City Museum’s “Art City” with one of her father’s “Polish wolf stories,” as she and visitors snip their way through a unique snowflake design.Īs an artist and former pre-school art teacher, Nichols has always been creative. ![]()
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