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No two alike
Students explain the mystery behind snow’s legendary myths
By Faith Ericson/Contributing Writer
Earlier this week St. Cloud was dusted with a layer of fresh snow.
Huge swirling snowflakes gave the SCSU campus the feeling of being trapped inside a snow globe. The world seems clean and peaceful. A walk through campus reveals the snowfall’s impact.
Even after years in the blustery winters of the Northland, Minnesotans may ponder this cold substance and why it affects people the way it does — the way it makes trees and sidewalks glisten, its calming effect, the intricate beauty of the snowflake, the THWOMP! of snowballs.
Everyone knows that no two snowflakes have the same shape, but how can that be possible with the billions of snowflakes that fall?
“Snow crystals form snowflakes. Each snowflake can be made up of anywhere from two to 200 separate crystals,” said junior Cory Johnson, who took an interest in meteorology in high school.
“I had a science teacher who taught us to keep our snowflakes by spraying cold hairspray onto a cold piece of glass and holding it outside for flakes to fall on,” Johnson said. “The complex patterns of each individual flake were astonishing.”
Johnson said that all snowflakes have six sides, and scientists think there are four different shapes of snow crystals. The shape that a snowflake takes depends on the temperature at which it was formed. So if two snowflakes are grown under identical conditions, the snowflakes will appear identical.
And though snowflakes seem delicate and pure, that isn’t the case.
“I worked at a Kid Stop last year and I was unexplainably grossed out when the little kids would jump around with their tongues sticking out trying to catch snowflakes,” senior Denise Salo said. “I found out those pure white flakes that little kids stick in their mouth are actually all formed around tiny bits of dirt that are carried up into the atmosphere. Snow crystals are really only soil particles that are surrounded by ice.”
Salo said that a new snowfall seems to be quiet and calming because snow actually muffles sound.
The structure of a snowflake all depends on the speed that it falls to the ground.
Johnson explained that a small snowflake will float to earth at 1.5 mph, but a snowflake that has picked up a lot of snow crystals will fall at 9 mph. If snowflakes spin like tops as they fall, they may be perfectly symmetrical when they hit the earth. If they fall sideways, they end up lopsided.
Minnesotans aren’t the only ones who get to witness a first snowfall.
Practically every state in the U.S. has seen snow. Even most portions of southern Florida have seen a few flurries.
A common snow myth is that some days it can be too cold to snow, but according to Johnson that’s not true.
Snowfall tends to be less in colder weather because the air can’t hold as much moisture, but no matter how cold it gets, the air always holds enough moisture to produce snow.
According to SCSU junior and trivia fanatic Amy Christianson, medieval Jewish mystics practiced rolling in the snow to purge themselves from evil urges. They were the first snow angels.
“Roman emperors are alleged to have sent slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was then flavored and served as part of their famous food orgies,” Christianson said.
Before throwing your next snowball, take notice of its packed mass of ice crystals balled together and consider the science involved in the making of each individual flake. It’s Mother Nature’s way of expressing herself in even the tiniest detail.
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