Related papers: Snow Crystals
Snowflake growth provides us with a fascinating example of spontaneous pattern formation in nature. Attempts to understand this phenomenon have led to important insights in non-equilibrium dynamics observed in various active scientific…
With climate modeling predicting a raise of at least 2 C by year 2100, the fate of ice has become a serious concern, but we still do not understand how ice grows (or melts). In the atmosphere, crystal growth rates of basal and prismatic…
We present measurements of the diffusion-limited growth of ice crystals from water vapor at a temperature of -5 C, in air at a pressure of $p_{air}=1$ bar. Starting with thin, c-axis ice needle crystals, the subsequent growth morphologies…
Crystal faceting can emerge via two broad physical mechanisms: anisotropic attachment kinetics on growing crystals and anisotropic surface energies on near-equilibrium crystals. For the case of the ice/vapor system, anisotropic attachment…
We investigate about the possibility of knowing the thermal history of each snow crystal through the analysis of its individual habitus. Supposition, based on experimental observations, that prevailing growth mechanisms of basal and…
Ice crystals growing in highly supersaturated air at temperatures near -5 C exhibit a distinctive, nonplanar dendritic morphology that has not been previously documented or explained. We examine this structure and identify its most…
We present experiments investigating the growth of ice crystals from water vapor in air using a free-fall convection chamber. We measured growth rates at temperatures of -5 C and -10 C as a function of supersaturation at an air pressure…
Topological properties of crystalline ice structures are studied by considering ring statistics, coordination sequences, and topological density of different ice phases. The coordination sequences (number of sites at topological distance k…
We describe a novel crystal growth instability that enhances the development of thin edges, promoting the formation of plate-like or hollow columnar morphologies. This instability arises when diffusion-limited growth is coupled with…
Snowflakes play a crucial role in weather and climate. A significant portion of precipitation that reaches the surface originates as ice, even when it ultimately falls as rain. Contrary to the popular image of symmetric, dendritic crystals,…
Ice nucleation and growth are critical in many fields, including atmospheric science, cryobiology, and aviation. However, understanding the detailed mechanisms of ice crystal growth remains challenging. In this work, crystallization at the…
We present observations of the formation of plate-like snow crystals that provide evidence for an edge-enhancing crystal growth instability. This instability arises when the condensation coefficient describing the growth of an ice prism…
The structure and properties of water or ice are of great interest to researchers due to their importance in the biological, cryopreservation and environmental fields. Hexagonal ice (Ih) is a common ice phase in nature and has been…
We describe an apparatus designed for obtaining precise measurements of the growth rates of ice crystals from water vapor over a range of experimental conditions. Our aim is to produce clean, high-quality test crystals in a well controlled…
I describe an adaptable apparatus for making precision measurements of the growth of faceted ice prisms from water vapor as a function of temperature, supersaturation, and background gas pressure. I also describe procedures for modeling…
Heterogeneous ice growth exhibits a maximum in freezing rate arising from the competition between kinetics and the thermodynamic driving force between the solid and liquid states. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the…
Depositional ice growth is an important process for cirrus cloud evolution, but the physics of ice growth in atmospheric conditions is still poorly understood. One major challenge in constraining depositional ice growth models against…
We present an investigation of chemical influences on the growth of ice crystals from water vapor. In one set of experiments, we grew ice crystals in a vapor diffusion chamber, observing crystal morphologies at temperatures from 0 C to -25…
In this work we perform computer simulations of the ice surface in order to elucidate the role of nitrogen in the crystal growth rates and crystal habits of snow in the atmosphere. In pure water vapor at temperatures typical of ice crystal…
We describe observations of a novel hysteresis behavior in the growth of ice crystals under near-vacuum conditions. Above a threshold supersaturation, we find that the ice growth rate often exhibits a sudden increase that we attribute to an…