This is Throwback Thursday #295. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!   email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

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Yes, you read that correctly… Snowflake Collecting. Is that even possible? Well, ESCONI member Mark Blazek wrote this article for the January 1975 issue of the ESCONI newsletter.

ROCKHUNTING IN WINTER?
by
Mark C. Blazek

As Fall approaches an end and the cold winter weather starts to roll in, field trips must end, and it appears that rockhounds must go into “hibernation” for the winter. During this time, the activities of the rockhound are restricted to the indoors and a general lull seems to come over us until the warm weather returns. I mean, after all, the rockhounds’ laboratory is the outdoors, and, in this area at least, during winter the rockhound can’t do much outdoors, right? WRONG! Let me tell you about a very fascinating form of mineral collecting which I’ll bet most of you never tried.

Have you ever thought about snowflake collecting? That’s right, snowflake collecting. Believe it or not, ice, snow, and water are considered rocks just like granite, pumice, and sandstone. That’s right. Snow is, according to definition, a rock. Ask any geologist and he’ll tell you so. I’ll bet that if some of you tried snowflake collecting this winter, you would be fascinated and you would like it. Let me explain a little more about the subject.

Snowflakes are preserved (and I use this term loosely) by collecting them on a piece of black velvet and transferring them with toothpicks to glass microscope slides. These simple instruments used are kept at below 320F. When placed on an ice cold microscope slide, the flakes can then be sprayed with an acrylic laquer to permanently encase them in plastic. Then, when the plastic hardens in a few minutes, they can be taken indoors, observed and stored without harm. There are other ways of preserving snowflakes but they involve covering a tiny snowflake with some sort of plastic.

Now most people think that it is impossible to collect snowflakes for they would melt or be destroyed if you touched them. But that’s not so at all. I have a collection of beautifully preserved snowflakes which I gathered during a science project last winter. The only rule that you have to follow is to keep everything you see (such as tooth-picks, collecting board, spray, etc.) below 32 F. Then the process is simple and fun not to mention the educational value. Snowflakes will always crystallize in the hexagonal system.and I have yet to find two the same although I have noticed various different classes of crystal forms.

If you want to go a little further, you can record the temperature, humidity, and so on, at the time you collect the snow crystals and you will find that the size and shape of the crystals are related to the conditions under which they form.

There is a lot more that can be done with this subject. I have just touched lightly on it here. One can, and many have, spent alife-time studying these minute perfect crystals. It is really a fascinating subject to explore when outdoor activities are limited during the winter. Snow crystals have an extraordinary and unique beauty about them. So let’s bundle up and get together. Let’s have a field trip to the nearest open field and go snowflake collecting! I bet that would be a first for ESCONI and probably most earth science clubs. How about it?

Ok, so I have to admit I was more than a little skeptical, but there is also this article from Popular Science called “Save a snowflake for decades” that advocates using chilled superglue. The article was originally published in the March 2006 issue of Popular Science. Check the link for the actual project methods.

Ever wanted to catch a snowflake and keep it forever? You can. The image above is a photograph of a snowflake that fell in January 1979, but it isn’t an old photo. It is a recent shot of a snowflake that’s been sitting in chemist Tryggvi Emilsson’s desk for decades, locked in a drop of that miracle of modern chemistry we call superglue.

The “super” in the thin, runny adhesive, which was invented during World War II, is the small molecules in it called cyanoacrylate monomers that penetrate and interlock with the microscopic forms of anything they touch. The glue hardens when the monomers link together, or polymerize, head-to-tail into long chains called polymers. This process is triggered by any minute trace of water or water vapor and progresses very quickly, which is why superglue hardens more rapidly on moist things, such as your fingers, than on the thing you’re trying to glue.

The tendencies of superglue to seep into the tiniest nooks and crannies, harden on contact with water, and solidify rapidly make it perfect for taking an impression of something very small, made of water, and ephemeral, a fact that struck Emilsson during the winter of ’79.

He’d been fascinated by Wilson A. Bentley’s famous 1931 book Snow Crystals, which contains 2,453 snowflake photographs taken over 47 freezing Vermont winters. Bentley had to work quickly to get each shot before the radiant heat from his body melted the flake. Despite being from Iceland (or perhaps because of it), Emilsson wasn’t about to endure long bouts of biting cold, so he came up with the superglue method described below, which lets you capture snowflakes outside and examine them later in the comfort of your living room. In front of a crackling fire, if you like.

Bentley could save just photographs, not the real snowflakes he longed as a child to take home to show his mother. One can only imagine what a collection he would have built if he’d had a few hundred tubes of superglue. Perhaps we’ll see when a modern-day Bentley comes along. Who knows, maybe it’s you.

So, maybe it is possible…