Popular Mechanics/Volume 49/Issue 1/Icy Jewels of the Winter Storms
Icy Jewels of the Winter Storms
Billions of Perfectly Symmetrical Snowflakes, Falling in Each Storm, Furnish Vast Field for Nature-Made Designs
By W. A. BENTLEY
Forty-five years ago my mother presented me with a small microscope. Searching for something to examine under it during the cold winter of Vermont, I hit upon a snow crystal, and for nearly half a century I have been looking at magnified snowflakes. Larger microscopes, and then a camera attachment, to permit permanent record of the most perfect designs, were soon added to the equipment and, in the nearly half century since, I have photographed more than 4,700 different specimens.
Studying snowflakes may appear a peculiar sort of hobby to occupy one for the greater part of a lifetime, but I find it just as fascinating today as I did when I looked through my first small microscope and discovered that a snow crystal was a work of art, a formation of which no two are ever alike. Collecting snowflake likenesses is a pursuit rewarded by rich returns. Yet it must not be assumed that it is an easy task. It takes skill, patience without limit and no little hardship to get results worth while.
When good snowflakes are falling, the true lover of them forgets cold, hunger, business, exposure, all else but the marvelous glittering gems the storm clouds are showering down upon his waiting board. With keen gaze, ever roaming about over the blackboard held to receive the glittering hosts from cloudland, the collector stands out in the storm, brushing off every few moments, the flakes alighting thereon, until one or more promising specimens are secured. Quickly, then, the board is taken indoors, into a very cold room having outdoor temperature. At one side of the window and facing it, is the photo-microscopic camera (a microscope and camera combined). At the other side and also facing the window, is an observation microscope, having a cold glass slide. The blackboard, sprinkled over with snowflakes. is taken first to the observation microscope, and a few of its most promising snow jewels removed from it. This is accomplished by pressing very gently the point of a sharp wooden splint upon the face of the snow crystal until it adheres to it. It is then jarred off onto the glass slide. A nervous or unsteady hand spells disaster, for the least pressure crushes the flake.
From now on, the utmost haste must be used, because evaporation soon wears away the crystals. One brief glimpse of each is taken, holding the breach meanwhile, and if a masterpiece is revealed, it is pressed down flat upon the glass slide, by means of the edge of a feather, the slide placed on the stage of the photo-microscope, quickly centered and photographed, an exposure of from ten to 100 seconds being given according to time of day, cloudiness, magnification, and power of the lens used. The flakes are magnified from sixty-four to 3,600 times.
Air Bubbles Trapped by Snow Crystals Form the Dark Lines in These Designs
Location is, of course, all important in this work; only those living where the winters are severe can be successful. Individual storms vary markedly as regards their richness in beautiful snowflakes. A favorable winter may furnish as many as fifteen good snowfalls and 300 or more new photos.
Good snowfalls often occur during, or at the end of, a period of zero weather. Great storms and blizzards not seldom give opportunity of gathering wonderful crystals. Yet, as a rule, less intense snows, when the crystals are of but medium to small size and fall rather scatteringly, are most favorable.
Three Examples of the Perfect Symmetry of Snow Crystals; They Probably Are Built Up Layer by Layer from the Center, Until All the Branches and Petals Are in Place
The larger flakes rarely exceed one-third inch in diameter. Often the best ones are tiny bits of pure beauty from one-twentieth to one-fiftieth inch in diameter. The percentage of perfect crystals in a favorable snowfall varies greatly. Sometimes all will be so rarely beautiful as to make selection a bewildering task, while again one may search all day long to find one or two perfect ones.
Snow crystals are never formed as a result of the freezing of raindrops or of visible clouds. Hail and granular snow result thereby. The making of the true snow crystals is far more complex. Each cloud-born jewel is the product of a process that goes on in one of the rarest laboratories in the universe, the thin air in which we live, and through the assembling of the unseen atoms and molecules of which all crystals are built.
The snowflake is doubtless built by stages from its center outward. And as it grows, and its branches and other adornments unite, it bridges over and imprisons tiny quantities of air, in the form of minute tubes. These look dark when viewed visually or photographed, and, together with other dark features, due to abrupt changes in thickness, give great richness of design to their interiors, and serve to outline the various transitory forms the crystals assumed in cloudland. They assume most varied forms, resembling dots and dashes, lines and other strange characters. Frequently they are arranged in a wonderfully symmetrical manner. The number of divisions a crystal may assume, whether it be a snow or other crystal, is supposed to be determined by the number and arrangement of the atoms that group together to form it.
The tiny magnetic poles of these crystals attract other atoms to them and establish lines of growth, called axes, and the bodies grow mainly outward from them. Minor variations in form depend upon the number and arrangement of the tiny electric charges that collect upon them and establish secondary or third-degree axes, and upon their rates of growth and the temperature. Rapid rates of growth tend to produce open branching crystals; slow rates of growth, solid ones. In the case of snow crystals, the branchy ones usually form within the lower, warmer, wetter clouds, because there is more material there for rapid growth, while the more solid ones form at higher, colder, drier altitudes. Not seldom they are wafted upward and downward within the clouds, and have both of these characteristics of growth impressed upon them.
Exceptionally beautiful crystals, when photographed, are used by schools, museums, lecturers, art-craftsmen, silk manufacturers, metal workers, interior decorators and other designers.
WHY HOT-WATER PIPES FREEZE MORE READILY THAN COLD
Housekeepers are sometimes puzzled at the tendency of hot-water pipes to freeze more easily than those that carry cold. The apparent mystery is explained by Leon McCulloch, research engineer of the Westinghouse laboratories. By means of a special testing apparatus he found that the freezing is due to a wall of water established by dropping temperature. Water is densest at thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. In a closed pipe, when the temperature falls toward thirty-nine degrees, that part which is being cooled becomes denser and then lighter below the thirty-nine-degree mark. Water that has not been cooled above the section exposed to the cold remains lighter, so that between the two areas of lesser density is a "wall" of dense water around the thirty-nine-degree region. This wall naturally limits the circulation, so that the exposed area is more likely to freeze. In the cold pipe, circulation permits the contents to remain more nearly at thirty-nine degrees, and the restricting wall is not present.
AUTO MAP LIKE ROLLER SHADE TAKES UP LITTLE ROOM
Attached to the windshield with rubber vacuum cups, an auto map rolls up like a shade when not in use, and is always in handy position. It occupies but little room, does not obscure the view when shut and is protected from dust and the weather in its holder.
For Greater Convenience in Reading the Map While Driving It Is Mounted on Roller on Windshield
KITE SHAPED LIKE MONOPLANE MADE BY BLIND MAN
Perry Hale's Monoplane Kite: It Requires No Tail and in the Air Closely Resembles a Real Plane
Fashioned on the lines of a monoplane, a new type of kite has been introduced by Perry T. W. Hale, all-American football star of 1900, who was blinded in an explosion some twelve years ago. It requires no tail and is said to be extremely popular with kite enthusiasts.
BIG GARAGE IN ELECTRIC LINER LATEST TRAVEL AID
Passengers on the electric ship "California" may take their automobiles with them at a minimum of trouble and risk, for the vessel has a garage with a capacity of 140 cars. The autos are loaded without hoisting, through side ports, and may be checked like baggage. The "California" uses electricity for almost everything except broiling steaks in the kitchen. Charcoal is employed for this, but the ship's propellers, clocks, elevators, steering apparatus and many other units are run with current generated by huge turbo-generators. The vessel is 601 feet long and has a beam of eighty feet. When it passes from a cold into a warm climate, the electric current is switched from the stoves to fans that drive cooled air over brine pipes. It is the largest commercial liner built under the American flag.
WEIRD IMAGE HEALTH GUARDS ABANDONED IN KOREA
Where Carved Images Are Giving Way to Modern Knowledge: Disease "Scarecrows," Once Popular in Korea, Are Being Forsaken in Favor of Enlightened Health and Sanitation Methods
Belief in the powers of weird faces carved on poles to cure sickness is waning in Korea, according to reports from a medical missionary there, many of the old superstitions being replaced by modern health practices. Young men are studying medicine, dentistry and public sanitation and comparatively little homage is paid the wooden "health commissioners" that once were thought to frighten sickness away and cure illness.
MOTOR BONE SAW FOR BUTCHER SAVES TIME AND WORK
Finding that his customers often grew impatient while waiting for him to saw through large bones, a butcher has devised a motorized unit that does the work much more quickly and with less effort. It is a bandsaw, rigged to a rack with a bell-shaped base on the floor. The frame can be adjusted to various heights, the saw is in an upright position, out of the way, when not in use, and a convenient starting switch for the motor is furnished in the form of a small trigger on top of the handle that guides the saw. A pull of the trigger starts the motor.
HOTEL TOWELS ARE POPULAR SOUVENIRS
It used to be that hotel guests favored spoons and other table articles when they desired a convenient "souvenir" to take away with them, but the manager of a large Chicago hotel declares that the public's taste has turned to towels, and that 20,000 of them disappear from the principal hostelries there every month. Loss of one towel a month to each room is the average experience, he says, and all sorts are taken, hand towels, those for the bath and all the other varieties. When hotels find towels belonging to another in their own laundries, they are mailed postpaid to the name tagged on them, according to a recently established custom.
FURNITURE CHILD CAN BUILD MADE OF CARDBOARD
Set of Cardboard Furniture, with Chair Taken Apart to Show How the Units Fit Together
Amusement and instruction are afforded the child in sets of collapsible cardboard furniture now on the market. The pieces are slotted so that they can easily be fitted together and, when correctly assembled, are said to be strong and serviceable for play uses. Living-room, dining-room and other sets are furnished.