High-Speed Camera Grabs First 3D Shots of Untouched Snowflakes

sciencehabit writes "Researchers have developed a camera system that shoots untouched flakes 'in the wild' as they fall from the sky. By grabbing a series of images of the tumbling crystals—its exposure time is one-40,000th of a second, compared with about one-200th in normal photography—the camera is revealing the true shape diversity of snowflakes. Besides providing beautiful real-time 3D snowflake photographs from a ski resort in Utah, the goal is to improve weather modeling. More accurate data on how fast snowflakes fall and how their shapes interacts with radar will improve predictions of when and where storms will dump snow and how much."

Comments

Don Komarechka

[Flammon]

I have a cousin who's writing a book on this.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sky-crystals-unraveling-the-mysteries-of-snowflakes

why are snowflakes symmetric?

[The_Rook]

what i've always wanted to know was why are snowflakes symmetric?

sure, a hexagonal crystal has bilateral symmetry etc. but snowflakes form long, complex arms with what can best be described as filigree. and yet, the filigree on opposite sides of the snowflake are also symmetric - that's shown even in these photos.

so what i want to know is how does crystal faces on opposite sides of the snowflake 'know' to grow symmetric filligree? what mechanism is there that allows one crystal face of a snowflake to 'know' what the other crystal faces are doing and so grow identical structures?

Re:why are snowflakes symmetric?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's because (snowflakes being quite small) all sides experience nearly identical conditions of temperature, humidity, whatever-else-affects-crystal-growth at nearly identical times.

I'm a cloud physicist and you, sir, are correct, identifying not only the reason for the symmetry (uniform conditions across the crystal over relevant time scales) but also the two controlling factors of temperature and humidity (well, humidity above saturation). Well done. Let me buy you a virtual beer.

The diversity of shapes is what's really cool. As far as I know (and this isn't my area) we have a phenomonology for habit (we know what shapes are most likely at a given temperature and humidity, for example) but we don't have a good theory to explain why that's so.

Still facsinating

[Ogive17]

I'm 33 and on occasion I'll see one of those perfectly shaped snowflakes land on my coat, after all these years I still think they are cool.

I just wish its trillions of friends would get off my lawn (and driveway).

FRACTALS !!!

[Taco Cowboy]

Wow !

The 3D structures of the snowflakes are fractals !!

Hopefully someone can come up with a fractal software that can let users experimenting with various 3D snowflake shapes

And with the availability of 3D printing, who knows what kind of new art forms this will bring forth ??