Chapter Project 2: Chapter 12, project

#1

The snowflakes are placed on clean microscope glass slides via a piece of black cloth. Ideally, the temperature should be below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Lighting is also key. The snowflakes structure is much like a diamond with its many facets. Although you can't see it with the naked eye, a snow crystal's molecular structure looks like latticework. Oxygen atoms are bound together with hydrogen atoms in symmetrical hexagons to form the lattice. The chemical formula for a snow crystal is H2O, since snow is made of water. Snowflakes all start as hexagonal prisms, which look like a tube but with six flat sides instead of being circular. These prisms can be short and wide (plates), tall and thin (columns) or proportional. As they grow, branches develop, forming what we traditionally picture as a snowflake shape. The final structure of a snow crystal depends on the temperature and the water saturation of the air. The "normal" structure that most people picture when they think of a snowflake shape is called a dendrite, and these form at two points---when the air is moderately saturated and the temperature is right around freezing or when the air is extremely saturated and the temperature is around zero degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise, the snow crystals form into more oddly shaped columns or plates. The physics behind why and how snow crystals grow with different shapes is still not understood very well.