The Snowflake
by Kenneth Libbrecht

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Book Reviews of The Snowflake

Book Review: Beautiful Photos and Inspired Science
Summary: 5 Stars

The famous snowflake pictures of William Bentley inspired Rasmussen to start taking pictures of snow. Bentley's pictures are carefully reproduced white-on-black images, but Rasmussen has experimented with colored light to give multicolored pastels that shine on and through the hundreds of crystals depicted here. There are plenty of the six-armed variety, but also triangular snowflakes, and twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four armed ones, as well as tiny ice crystals shaped like needles, prisms, barrels, or bullets. can form at the right conditions. Different humidity and temperature produces the shapes. For the familiar snowflake, each arm experiences the same microclimate, so each changes in the same way. One arm of a flake thus does not "know" what the other arms are doing so it can turn itself out identically; they are all simply products of identical environmental history. As can be suspected, snowflakes that develop in the same regions have the same general design. But of course, everyone knows that no snowflakes are identical. Libbrecht considers whether this question is really true, and finds it cannot be answered without close considerations of "What is a snowflake?" and "What is identical?"

Snowflake science is here presented clearly and with good humor by someone who obviously loves his work. Libbrecht demonstrates that since a snowflake is a billion billion water molecules grabbed from the atmosphere, some of them are from your own exhalations. He does the calculations to show that about a thousand of the water molecules in every snowflake you see in this book (and of course, any other snowflake) come from you. "Thank you for your contribution," he says, "and keep up the good work." Jaunty and illuminating scientific descriptions, plus the most beautiful pictures of snowflakes ever made, make this a volume that can be valued for eye-catching brilliance or mind-engaging elucidation.

Summary of The Snowflake

Photography Books

• Subjects > Arts & Photography > Photography
• Science & Math > Environment > Weather