What types of snowflakes are there

As water vapor starts condensing on its surface, the ice particle quickly develops facets , thus becoming a small hexagonal prism.

For a while it keeps this simple faceted shape as it grows. As the crystal becomes larger, however, branches begin to sprout from the six corners of the hexagon this is the third stage in the diagram at right. Since the atmospheric conditions e. While it grows, the crystal is blown to and fro inside the clouds, so the temperature it sees changes randomly with time.

Those temperature changes morph the arms into different shapes and give us the diverse snowflakes and crystals we see. Since all the arms endure the same fluctuations, they can grow symmetrically. The second example shows a fernlike stellar dendrite with two errant branches growing up out of the main plane of the crystal.

Rimed Crystals Clouds are made of countless water droplets, and sometimes these droplets collide with and stick to snow crystals. The frozen droplets are called rime.

All the different types of snow crystals can be found decorated with rime. When the coverage is especially heavy, so that the assembly looks like a tiny snowball, the result is called graupel. The first two pictures at right have relatively light rime coverage. The final example is completely covered with rime, but you can still see the six-fold symmetry of the underlying stellar crystal.

Irregular Crystals The most common snow crystals by far are the irregular crystals. These are small, usually clumped together, and show little of the symmetry seen in stellar or columnar crystals.

Artificial Snow Snow machines shoot a mixture of water and compressed air out of nozzles. The water comes out as fine droplets, and the air cools as it decompresses, causing the droplets to freeze.

A fan blows the ice particles onto the slopes. You can see from the picture at right that artificial snow is made of frozen water droplets, with none of the elaborate structure found in real snow crystals. If you want to go outside and look at snow crystals for yourself, I recommend my new book -- Ken Libbrecht's Field Guide to Snowflakes. This book contains a much more complete list of the different snow crystal types, along with how to find them. Once you know what to look for, snowflake watching is a fascinating recreation!

Classifying Snowflakes. How does one classify snowflakes? It's not so easy, because how you divide the different types is somewhat a matter of taste. There is a good analogy with breeds of dogs. The definition of different breeds is decided upon by a committee of people, and really one can make up as many breeds as one wants.

And no matter how many different breeds you define, some dogs will be mixed, not belonging to any one breed. Snowflakes do come in different types, and you need to give them names if you want to talk about them. But there will never be a precise way to define the different types. I prefer the 35 types shown at the top of this page, but others have come up with alternate classifications schemes.

Some of these are shown below. International Classification System In the International Commission on Snow and Ice produced a fairly simple and widely used classification system for solid precipitation [1]. This system defines the seven principal snow crystal types as plates, stellar crystals, columns, needles, spatial dendrites, capped columns, and irregular forms. To these are added three additional types of frozen precipitation: graupel, ice pellets, and hail.

A snowflake starts as a tiny grain of dust or pollen floating in a cloud. Water vapor from the air sticks to the grain and freezes, forming into a tiny hexagonal crystal. From there, more vapor condenses on the crystal as it travels to the ground, and the snowflake's "arms" take shape. Smithsonian reported that, though snowflakes are stunning to observe, scientists classify snowflakes and analyze how they form to better understand how crystals may be used in a host of applications, from silicon to semiconductors in computers and electronics.

News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Updated October 04, Key Takeaways: Snowflake Shapes Snowflakes have characteristic shapes because they consist of water molecules, which have a bent shape.

Most snowflakes are flat crystals that have six sides. They resemble lacy hexagons. The main factor affecting snowflake shape is temperature. Temperature determines the shape of a crystal as it forms and also changes that shape as it melts. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph. Snowflake Shapes and Patterns. Snowflake Chemistry - Answers to Common Questions. How to Grow a Borax Crystal Snowflake.

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