Haikal Dwi Putra (13)

Raihan Rasyid (27)

“Snow Formation Process”

Snow is one of interesting phenomenon when winter comes. Snow become interesting because the
ice crystals are so soft and white like cotton. Snow just fall in countries  that has four seasons
(subtropis) As in the countries of the Australian continent, East Asia, North America and Europe.

Snow begins from water vapor that gathered in the Earth’s atmosphere. A bunch of water vapor
then cools to the point of condensation (the point at which the gas turns into liquid or solid form),
then coagulates and form clouds. At the beginning of forming the clouds, its mass is smaller than the
mass of the air, so the clouds float in the air. But, once the water vapor continue to gathered in the
clouds, its mass also increases. So, at some point the air can no longer hold it mass. Then, the clouds
broke and the water particles fall to the earth.

The water particles that fall is pure water (not contaminated by other particles). The pure water
doesn’t freeze directly at the 0 degree of Celcius, to make the pure water freeze required lower
temperature than 0 degree of Celcius. However, low temperature doesn’t enough to form snow. The
particles of pure water need to contaminate with other particles in the air that will make the
freezing process faster. Then, the pure water will turn into ice crystals.

The contaminated particles that involve in this process called nucleator, not only has function to
make the freezing process faster but also to tied the water vapor. So, the water particles
(contaminated one) that gathered with the other water particles will form bigger ice crystals. These
ice crystals that fall to earth which we call snow. Snow has a unique structure because there is no
snow crystal that has the same shape, just like our fingerprint. Therefore, no snow falls in a tropical
country like Indonesia because the water particles can never freeze and turn into snow.

Snow is one of the interesting phenomena when winter arrives. Snow becomes attractive because
the ice crystals are so soft and white like cotton. But, as water vapor continues to collect in the
cloud, its mass also increases. Then, the clouds broke and the water particles fell to the earth. The
water particles that fall are pure water (not contaminated with other particles). Then, the pure
water will turn into ice crystals. The contaminated particles involved in this process, called
nucleators, serve not only to speed up the freezing process but also to bind water vapor. So, water
particles (contaminated) that gather with other water particles will form larger ice crystals.