The Magic of the Snowflake
Cover Photo - Annalise Batista - Pixabay
The magic of the snowflake, standing outside during the first winter snow, sticking our tongues out to allow that tiny bit of fluff to make a perfect landing. As the flakes kept falling they created a snowy playground. It's hard to believe that something that can cause such joy is in fact very scientific.
Photo Credit - Kathleen Barrett ©2020, All Rights Reserved.
Did you know that snowflakes are formed when water vapor freezes? Crystals form and as they attach to one another they form the snowflake. They usually only have 6 sides, although there are extremely rare ones that do have twelve. It is generally accepted that no two are the same although there is no scientific proof of this.
The group of photos above was taken by Kathleen Barrett from Knox, Pennsylvania. She managed to capture the crystalline beauty of quite a few different patterns of snowflakes.
There are various kinds of snowflakes, from simple prisms to stellar dendrites, the website shared below gives perfect examples of these.
https://tinyurl.com/yaem9kpc
Photo Credit - Free-Photos - Pixabay
Colder temperatures help to form larger flakes with more complicated designs.
If you see snowflakes in photos such as the one below or the ones in the title photo, chances are they are not real snowflakes. Eight sided flakes do not exist in nature.
Photo Credit - Pixabay
We, as decorative artists, have painted our share of snowflakes and I am sure we will paint many more...to keep up with the real ones, we would have to paint over a million billion in a year's time.
Enjoy your summer!
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