In 1887, a rancher named Matt Coleman noticed huge snowflakes falling on one of his cattle pastures in western Montana during a blizzard and declared them “bigger than milk pans.” Measuring 15 inches (38 centimeters) wide and nearly 8 inches (20 centimeters) thick, these massive snowflakes currently hold the record for the largest snowflakes ever recorded, according to The World Records. Guinness.

Although there is no photographic evidence of giant snowflakes, they remain a popular piece of information about precipitation. But the question arises: Is it possible for a snowflake to be the size of a dinner plate? And what is really the biggest snowflake possible?

Kenneth LibrechtThe physics professor at Caltech said such monster scales are rare but not impossible. This is because of a common misconception about what makes a snowflake a real snowflake.

When people talk about snowflakes, what they really mean is snow crystals; these are single ice crystals in which water molecules are arranged in a hexagonal pattern, causing them to “exhibit that characteristic sixfold symmetry that we all have.” similar,” Libbrecht told LiveScience.

Snowflakes, on the other hand, can include anything from a single snow crystal to hundreds or even thousands of snow crystals that break when they fall to the ground and stick together in the air, forming clusters or clumps.

“You see these big balls falling out of the sky all the time” in cold places, Libbrecht said. How do they take shape?”

So it’s possible that Coleman’s infamous torture on the cattle farm more than a century ago was just a bunch of ice crystals colliding to form a single snowflake. However, the typical size of a snow crystal is much smaller. Liebbrecht, who has spent much of his career studying and photographing snow crystals, writing several books and creating a website dedicated to the subject, said the largest snow crystal he had ever seen in the wild was a “monster.”

“This is the biggest I’ve ever seen, about 10 millimeters [0,4 дюйма]” said Librecht. – It was the size of a penny.

In his laboratory, under controlled conditions where there is no wind to break the snow crystals in the air and the temperature can be adjusted to a perfect 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius), ideal for snow crystal formation, Libbrecht says – “it’s easy to see.” crystals grow to the same size.

“That’s as much as they can get,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for a while and I know a lot of snowflake photographers and we compare records. Ten millimeters is a big indicator.”

The reason why snow crystals reach this size is wind.

“The main size limitation is that these large crystals are quite fragile,” he said. “They have to grow fast and if there is wind they fall apart. Therefore, the weather conditions required for the production of such large crystals are rare.”

Even though snow crystals are small, the variety of shapes they can take is astounding. Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya, who created the world’s first artificial snowflakes in the 1930s, documented their various shapes on a morphological diagram. WhichThey can range from simple prisms and columns to more, depending on the temperature and humidity in which they form. detailed rosettes and fern-like star-shaped dendrites.

For example, hexagonal dendrites begin to form at temperatures below freezing, while columns form at temperatures around minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 25 degrees Celsius).

“When you grow them in the lab, you can see what happens under different conditions,” Libbrecht said. said. “This is an extremely diverse growth. Not all crystals grow in such diverse shapes, which seems to be unique to ice.” Source