Bentley's Snowflakes

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

No Gravatar

So, I was driving home from a business trip and got caught in a snow squall.  Which, except for a very brief flurry session (which left my trees covered in white- but the streets and sidewalks clean as a whistle), it had been the only snow I’ve seen this winter.  (Our temperatures have actually been in the 60s and 70s- in February and now also in March!)

And, as I was watching these swirling masses of white, I recalled that each of the snowflakes that comprised this blob have their own individual crystalline structure.   About a century ago, an amateur photographer developed a technique to take pictures of these individual crystals.  And, Wilson Bentley’s photographs are contained in the US national museum- the Smithsonian Institution.  Bentley is the one who helped us learn that no two snowflakes were alike.

Popular Mechanics Feb 1922

Bentley was supposed to be a dairy farmer.  Except in 1880 (when he was 15), his mom got him a microscope.   It took Bentley two years to figure out how to photograph microscopic images.   And, this farmer eventually published his concept in Popular Mechanics (February 1922).

Bentley attached the camera to the position that the eyepiece would  normally be on the microscope.  And, instead of using the camera shutter, he used a black card held over the lens.  All this had to be done in a very cold room- or the snowflakes would melt or sublimate (covert from solid to gaseous form).   He needed to use a feather to manipulate the snowflake onto a glass slide (under the microscope objective).  And, then, once n place, he lifted the card off the lens and timed the exposure (8 to 100 seconds).

Bentley's Snowflakes

 

In so doing, Bentley managed to capture a snowflake, magnify it via microscopy, and photograph it for posterity.  (No one ever heard of photomicrography before his efforts.)  And, Bentley opened science up to studying crystallography- how crystals form and grow.

After photographing some 5000 snowflakes, he developed a classification system.  (The terms needles, capped columns, flowerlike plates, star shaped dendrites are still in use today.)  Bentley postulated that the temperature and humidity of the environment set the snowflake structure.  It took 30 years for a physicist (Ukichiro Nakaya), who made artificial snow in the laboratory, to prove that postulate.

In 1904, Bentley asked if he could donate 500 of his “best” photographs to the Smithsonian, to ensure folks like you and me would get a chance to see them.  Except the museum curator was unimpressed.  After all, Bentley was just a farmer!   (Thankfully, Samuel Langley, the secretary of the museum overruled him!)

William J. Humphreys (the chief physicist for the United States Weather Bureau) convinced Bentley to compiled 2,500 of his best images in a book, Snow Crystals.  One month later, December 1931, Bentley succumbed to pneumonia.

Do you know how he got pneumonia?  Playing in the snow, collecting his crystals.

Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A.

 

 

 
Getting ready to do your taxes yourself?   This will inform you of what has changed for this year’s filing season.  (Of course, you can contact us-  we’ll ensure that you pay the lowest amount of taxes required by law. 🙂 )

File 2016 Taxes

Share this:
Share this page via Email Share this page via Stumble Upon Share this page via Digg this Share this page via Facebook Share this page via Twitter
Share

2 thoughts on “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…”

    1. I always loved seeing his stuff. From what my friends (with younger kids) tell me, the Smithsonian now has these in storage and not in full view, Alice. Maybe they’ll take them out on Tuesday when we get our first real snowfall of the season.

Comments are closed.