SPRING QUARTER, 2006
Department of History
University of California, Irvine
Instructor: Dr. Barbara J. Becker
Observations of Snowflakes with a Microscope
|
Observation 14.2. Observables in figur'd Snow.
Exposing a piece of black Cloth, or a black Hatt to the falling Snow, I have often with great pleasure, oberv'd such an infinite variety of curiously figured Snow that it would be as impossible to draw the Figure and shape of every one of them, as to imitate exactly the curious and geometrical Mechanisme of Nature in any one....
In all which I observ'd, that if they were of any regular Figures, they were always branched out with six principal branches, all of equal length, shape and make, from the center, being each of them inclin'd to either of the next branches on either side of it, by an angle of sixty degrees.
Now, as all these stems were, for the most part, in one flake exactly of the same make,so were they in differing Figures of very differing ones; so that in a very little time I have observ'd above an hundred several cizes and shapes of these starry flakes.
The branches also out of each stem of any one of these flakes, were exactly alike in the same flake; so that of whatever Figure one of the branches were, the other five were sure to be of the same, very exactly....
Observing some of these figur'd flakes with a Microscope, I found them not to appear so curious and exactly figur'd as one would have imagin'd, but like Artificial Figures, the bigger they were magnify'd, the more irregularities appear'd in them; but this irregularity seem'd ascribable to the thawing and breaking of the flake by the fall, and not at all to the defect of the plastick virtue of Nature....
And though one of these six-branched Stars appear'd here below much of the shape described in the Third Figure... yet I am very apt to think, that could we have a sight of one of them through a Microscope as they are generated in the Clouds before their Figures are vitiated [deformed] by external accidents, they would exhibit abundance of curiosity and neatness there also.... I think it not irrational to suppose that these pretty figur'd Stars of Snow, when at first generated might be also very regular and exact.
back to "Preface" of Hooke's Micrographia
 |