Do-It-Yourself Snowflake Lab
Supported by cinder blocks, shielded by a tattered plastic tarp and surrounding a plexiglass-covered block of styrofoam (below), Gledhill's contraption doesn't look like much.
Yet it's a highly refined piece of do-it-yourself engineering inspired by the work of a research group at CalTech and another at Purdue University, led by atmospheric chemist Paul Shepson.
"It's easy to grow ice crystals. The hard and expensive part is maintaining stable conditions to control how they're growing," said Travis Knepp, a former postdoctoral researcher in Shepson's lab who shared advice with Gledhill when he called him up earlier this year.
"If the temperature changes by just one degree, the crystal will take on a whole other shape," he said. "He has some very nice crystals growing, and I'm really impressed with the photos."
