The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry

Kenneth Libbrecht, Rachel Wing

Quarto Publishing Group USA, Sep 1, 2015 - Science - 144 pages

A chronicle of snow crystal creation from the Caltech physicist known as the world's leading snowflake expert and consultant for the movie Frozen.
Snowflakes may be an everyday, common subject, but you've never seen them like this! A collection of amazing photography of snow crystals using a unique system designed to take super-detailed micro images of these miniature ice masterpieces, The Snowflake is an extraordinary look at a seemingly ordinary object. Author Kenneth Libbrecht, a physics professor at Caltech and the pre-eminent snow-crystal researcher, discusses the physics and mythology of snow and how snow crystals are made. Photographer Patricia Rasmussen presents remarkable color micro-photography of snowflakes, and also discusses the history of snow-crystal micro-photography as invented by farmer Wilson Bentley.
"What better way to teach your children to truly appreciate the beauty of nature than them seeing snow with their own eyes and then going on this journey with The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry. Nothing else shows the miracle that is nature better than this book." — The Palmetto Queen blog

Contents

• Winters Frozen Artistry: 9
• Snowflake Watching: 19
• A Field Guide to Falling Snow: 35
• Snowflake Weather: 65
• Snow Crystal Symmetry: 81
• Morphogenesis on Ice: 97
• Designer Snowflakes: 109
• Snowflake Photography: 125
• Epilogue: 141
• Index: 142
• About the Authors: 144

About the author

Kenneth Libbrecht is a professor of physics at Caltech, where he studies the molecular dynamics of crystal growth, especially how ice crystals grow from water vapor, which is essentially the physics of snowflakes. He has authored several books on this topic, including The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty, The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry, The Art of the Snowflake, and Field Guide to Snowflakes. Dr. Libbrecht served as science consultant on the Disney film Frozen. He lives in Pasadena with his wife, Rachel Wing. They have two children.

Rachel Wing is a park ranger for the city of Monrovia, California, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. With a background in geology, she now specializes in balancing wilderness preservation with wildfire safety for nearby residents. Rachel loves to

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry
• Authors: Kenneth Libbrecht, Rachel Wing
• Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2015
• ISBN: 1627887334, 9781627887335
• Length: 144 pages
• Subjects: Photography / Subjects & Themes / Landscapes; Science / Earth Sciences / Meteorology & Climatology