No Two Snowflakes are Alike
Posted on January 16, 2006
MSNBC.com has an article about Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and his snowflake research. Libbrecht studies the physics behind snowflake creation.
Several of Libbrecht's snowflake discoveries are being used on snowflake stamps by USPS. Libbrecht travels to find the snowflakes with the most unusual crystal types.
When Libbrecht started making snowflakes in the laboratory, he took microscopic photographs in order to be able to study the basic physics of each flake. In 2001, he started capturing images of natural snowflakes.Location is important.
"Fairbanks sometimes offers some unusual crystal types, because it's so cold," Libbrecht said. "Warmer climates, for example, in New York state and the vicinity, tend to produce less spectacular crystals."
"I visit the frozen North and wait for snow to fall," Libbrecht said in a recent e-mail interview. "I'm in northern Ontario right now."
Photographs of some of Libbrecht's coolest snowflakes can be found here. And as for the question about whether snowflakes are really all different Libbrecht says yes:
"The answer is basically yes, because there is such an incredibly large number of possible ways to make a complex snowflake," Libbrecht said. "In many cases, there are very clear differences between snow crystals, but of course there are many similar crystals as well. In the lab we often produce very simple, hexagonal crystals, and these all look very similar."
