By the end of the day yesterday we got a fairly lucid explanation of the discrete (my word of the week) bands in light spectra. I was a physics major until a year before graduation, but If I ever knew this stuff I've forgotten it.
Why do snow crystals grow in such a planar way?
Hey, wait. Your post was up before I posted mine, yet yours stays on top. Subtle.
The timestamp on posts reflects when you first opened the entry window, not when you hit 'save'.
Why do snow crystals grow in such a planar way?
Actually, they don't always. It depends on the temperature at which the crystal grows. (PDF, see first paragraph of introduction)
The short answer is that the nature of the ice lattice network leads to the planar shape. When water freezes, it arranges itself into planar hexagons on a molecular level. As the crystal grows, the fastest dimensional growth is (in most typical atmospheric conditions) within this plane; the hexagons are much wider than they are thick. This leads to an exaggerated aspect ratio in the crystal structure as a whole.
Imagine that you're stacking thin tiles. Every time you stack a tile on top of another tile, your pile only grows slightly in height. Every time you place a tile next to another tile, it grows quite a bit in length or width.
Wow, that was fast. Ask and ye shall receive.
Tia, it says something about my character, I'm afraid, that my first thought was "Hey, it'd be cool to make a window out of a whole collection of those!"
