In areas of the northern hemisphere and southern regions like the four seasons, in winter routine. One interesting phenomenon in the winter is snow. Called interesting because snow only appear in high latitude regions such as in Europe and in the high altitude area such as the mountain peaks. Another interesting thing is crystal or snowflake has a unique structure and peculiarities of the color white.
Snow is naturally derived from the water vapor in the atmosphere. The clouds form when water vapor (water in the form of gas) in the atmosphere cools to the point of condensation, which is a change from a gas to a liquid or solid. Water droplets in the clouds long into granules heavy that they fall in the form of precipitation. Precipitation is the result of condensation of water vapor that falls under gravity atmospheric. Some forms of precipitation such as rain, snow, hail, sleet and snow, and hail.
If water vapor is quite cold, the water vapor does not condense into water droplets, but it will be a tiny ice crystals. In most places on earth, the rain generally begins with the snow but the snow is melting during his travels in the atmosphere or when it fell to the earth's surface.
The melting of snow due to get warm while crossing the heat. That's what causes the snow does not fall in the sun-rich regions, such as in the tropics, including Indonesia. The air temperature in the tropics is relatively higher than the air temperature in the four seasons that the snow often fell in the four seasons. Sometimes, when the air temperature is very low, ice crystals can form small balls of ice that came hail.
Keep in mind that the snow is very cold when in the cloud even when the summer. Usually the water in the clouds freezes at temperatures around zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit for the role nucleator (also called of impurities particles), which is a small piece of material that forms naturally assist the incorporation of water molecules.
Nucleator attract water molecules so that the energy of water molecules were reduced to a condition in which the water molecules into ice crystals. Nucleator in the snow crystal is impurities particles, bacteria and other materials that float around the atmosphere. Water condenses with the nucleator help, later became the nucleus (core) of snow crystals.
When snow crystals move around cloud particles which condense more water and freeze into snow crystals. Each set of snow crystals to form snowflakes. Snowflakes can fall to earth as a blob who escaped from small ice crystals were irregular. But when the temperature is cold enough, each symmetry of snow crystals can reach the ground intact and gave rise to various forms of symmetry of the six sides of a beautiful and attractive.
Snowflakes began a supercooled liquid droplets (below freezing) when in the cloud. At temperatures around minus 10 degrees Celsius or 14 degrees Fahrenheit, the grains gradually begin to freeze. Freezing has triggered a complex sequence of events when a water freezes to become an ice crystal, a few grains of the surrounding supercooled liquid evaporates and releases moisture into the air. Water molecules so that it freezes into ice crystals and snowflakes began to grow.
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| Variety snowflakes in different shape. (Picture from: http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/) |
Variety of stunning snow crystals form determined by the temperature in the cloud. All have one thing ice crystals commonly, a six-sided symmetry. That is because the water molecules in the ice crystal form a hexagonal lattice. On rare occasions can be found snowflake 12 sides, and this is a six-sided snowflakes were doubles.
During the snow crystal growth, crystal snow became heavier. If it is so, snowflakes fall through the clouds. During the trip down, the snow is encountered millions more drops of water. Ice crystals grow larger into droplets in the cloud so that the water content in the crystals grow.
In all clouds, the amount of ice crystals multiply, and soon the entire cloud could be ice. If the ice is heavy enough, the ice was falling from the clouds, the atmosphere down to the surface of the earth, and covered the ground with snow. Snowflakes are encased in frost (rime) to form a ball known as graupel (also called smooth ice or snow grains).
White snowflakes bring in addition to making the ice clean, bright and seemed to glow. This is due to diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum of light by the surface facets or small ice crystals. The crystal structure of snow possible snowflake reflecting all colors in all directions in the same amount that comes in white. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | GUN GUN GUNAWAN | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 14032013]
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