In London, the place I stay, you may neglect a few white Christmas. The most effective I can hope for is a pitiful flurry of flakes. So, this yr, I’m on a mission to create my very own snow. And never simply any snow: for optimum festive influence, I need to make the world’s largest snowflake.
It will likely be a problem. The Guinness world document stands at 38 centimetres throughout and 20 centimetres thick. This whopper was recorded in Montana in January 1887, when ranch proprietor Matt Coleman reported seeing snowflakes “larger than milk pans” throughout a extreme storm. Admittedly, some specialists are sceptical. “If this was falling from the sky, they would probably need to be wearing crash helmets,” says glaciologist Douglas Mair on the College of Liverpool, UK. However, Guinness World Information insists that up to date sources assist the document.
However maintain on! There’s an addendum: the most important snow crystal measured 10 millimetres. “A snow crystal is a single crystal of ice,” says Ken Libbrecht, who photographed the record-breaker in Ontario, Canada, in December 2003. The textbook picture of a Christmas snowflake is definitely an ideal snow crystal, he explains, whereas a snowflake is a number of crystals joined collectively. So maybe I might break a document by making the world’s largest snow crystal as a substitute – how arduous can that be? “You’ll be able to grow some ice crystals from water vapour,” says Libbrecht, who makes “designer” snow crystals in his lab on the California Institute of Know-how. “But if you want to make it look like a snow crystal – I mean an actual symmetrical snow crystal – that’s a tall order.” Clearly, I’ll want some assist.…
