Official Kids Mag www.kidscoop.com © Vicki Whiting January 2023
4
Standards Link: Investigation: Recognize similarites and differences in common objects.
Stellar means "star-like"
and dendrite means
"tree-like." Put together
it means these kinds of
snowflakes look like
stars and have
branches like trees.
Most snowflakes are
this kind. The columns
are hexagonal, like a
wooden pencil. Can
you find 4 or more
hollow columns?
Not all snowflakes
are thin flat plates
or slender columns.
Some snowflakes
are made of many
ice crystals jumbled
together. Can you find
6 spatial dendrites?
These crystals
have flat, plate-like
arms or sections.
Can you find
at least 10
sectored plate
snow crystals?
Here's
how sleet
and snow
are made:
water
vapor
water
drop
ice
SLEET
water
vapor
ice
SNOW
No. Rain that freezes
when it falls is called
sleet. Sleet doesn't
have the fancy shapes
of snowflakes and it
forms differently.
Look closely: Find the differences
in these two pictures.
hat we usually call snowflakes are little
crystals of ice called snow crystals.
The water molecules in ice form a six-sided,
or hexagonal, crystal. That is why most
snowflakes have six sides.
Although no two snowflakes are exactly
alike, their shapes do fall into several
categories. Here are four kinds of
snowflakes.
Standards Link: Earth Science: Weather can be
observed, written and described.
People say no two snowflakes
are alike. This fact was
discovered by a man named
Wilson A. Bentley. In 1885 he
was the first person to
photograph a single snowflake!
He figured out a way to attach
a microscope to a camera.
Bentley went on to photograph
more than 5,000 snowflakes
during his lifetime, never
finding two alike.
