So we recently had a ‘blizzard’ here where I am, and while my area didnt get iced, we did get beautiful lovely snow. As a budding crystallographer, I looked at the snowflakes, really big crystals and went, “OMG! Tropochemical twinning! Merohedral twinning! SQUEE SQUEE!” After realizing my inherent nerdyness, I stumbled upon to this website from Caltech talking about the crystallography, physics and chemistry of snowflakes. Utterly and completely fascinating. Everyone should check it out. I’ve been lucky enough to see a 12 sided snowflake. Even the three sided ones. I really dont think these are ‘crystals’ but probably more like quasicrystals that have the ‘forbidden’ 5, 7, 9 and 12 symmetry. Or it could just be twinned up the wazoo. Either way, it’s really interesting. Go read!
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
December 20, 2008 by Inorganic Chemist
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