| Here’s a good example of a designer snowflake. It was grown at about -14 C, quite near the dendrite peak, and at a fairly low supersaturation. Under these conditions the needle tip immediately sprouted six dendritic arms. At various times during growth the crystal was moved to -7 C for just a few seconds, and then moved back to -14 C; this operation caused a pair of sidebranches to sprout from each of the six main arms. All the sidebranches on the crystal were induced using this procedure; none grew otherwise. Tip-to-tip diameter is 1.8 mm.
Check out a movie showing the crystal growing (3 Mbyte)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/gallery98/movie3.gif |
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