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Edc (not verified)

4 years 12 months ago

I'm always glad to see proper hexagonal paper snowflakes. Ice is a hexagonal mineral (or trigonal, depending on whom you ask), so crystals need to have six points (sometimes 3 or 12 or 18), but not four! Insisting on this detail can make cutting paper snowflakes a learning experience. (There is also a cubic version of ice that forms at extremely low temperatures that don't often occur on the Earth's surface, and eight more versions with different symmetries that form under laboratory conditions, but we won't go there.)

Also: Try to avoid the temptation to snip off the sharp point of the folded paper--that leaves a hole in the center of the crystal. Snow crystals begin as ice forms on a tiny particle (dust, smoke, etc.) at the center and grow outward from there; they couldn't form at all without a center to start from.

Definitely check out Wilson Bentley's pioneering work on photographing snow crystals in the link above, along with more modern work by Kenneth Libbrecht at Cal Tech and others--search online for "snow crystal photography" since direct links aren't allowed here.

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