The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album Review

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The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album ReviewThis contemporary assemblage is an artwork of Love by Libbrecht, author of three prior books on snowflakes. He is Physics Professor at Caltech and provides eye-catching color photo-illustrations of over 400 snowflakes, many as full page images, all sharply detailed and on blue or crimson colored backgrounds, often illuminated by diverse light sources and spectra to best define architectural details of these tiny wondrous crystals forming from water vapor at freezing temperatures. It comes not as a surprize to learn he was from North Dakota.
In addition to snowflakes, the author describes associated particles called rime which may agglomerate into graupel or soft hail. The typical snowflake is a stellar snow crystal composed of a thin plate of ice with six (hexagonal) primary arms that regularly have sidebranches called stellar dendrites, hence appearing fern- or tree-like with no two identical (like fingerprints in Man). Infrequently, the flakes appear as six sectored plates sans dendrites whilst warmer temperatures may produce ice columns and/or needles, generally hexagonal, or appearing as peculiar capped columns with hexagonal wheels resembling tiny spools.
As a photographer, I would have liked the author to have included a brief synopsis of the equipment and technique he used to garner these photographs - i,e, the type of microscopic lens, magnifications needed, light sources, type of camera and film used (digital vs silver halide). However, this book is on the Art of the Snowflake, and not a how-to book. The author indicates some digital editing was done to remove minor blemishes, etc., and based on the huge number of photos taken I'd conclude digital camera and sensor was used. This book is an informative read, is great stock for the coffee table, and is perhaps an inviting holiday seasonal gift this Winter.The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album OverviewThe perfect geometry and exquisite beauty of nature is nowhere so clear to us as in the snowflake. But how have we been able to appreciate this infinitesimal wonder in all its crystalline glory? This book, as much a work of art as a testament to science, reveals how one of the snowflake's most inspired photographers came to such intimate knowledge of his craft and its fleeting focus. Beautiful pictures illustrate Kenneth Libbrecht's story of the microphotography of snow crystals, from the pioneering work of Wilson Bentley in the 1890s right up to Ken's own innovations in our age of digital images. A breathtaking look at the works of art that melt in an instant, this is a book to page through and savor, season after season.


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My Brother Loved Snowflakes: The Story of Wilson A. Bentley, the Snowflake Man Review

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My Brother Loved Snowflakes: The Story of Wilson A. Bentley, the Snowflake Man ReviewThe more well known children's book, Snowflake Bentley (Caldecott Medal Book), may have won the Caldecott award, but I must confess to enjoying this book much more. "My Brother Loved Snowflakes," told from the brother's perspective, shows the human side of people who may be different than others, and makes the quest for knowledge about people, about us and our quest to learn about the world we are blessed with. Rather than playing up Willie Bentley as an eccentric, it shows him as unique, and shows children that for all his differences he gave much to our wealth of knowledge and above all the people in the story -- even the people who attend a lecture he walks out on without a word because of the snow, as very accepting that Bentley is who Bentley is and that there is nothing wrong with that. Since our children will meet so many other children who are vastly different than them, some of them seemingly eccentric, this is a subtle reminder that we all have value and that the difference is part of what makes the world interesting. We need that diversity.
This book will have an added interest to homeschoolers because Bentley and his brother are taught by their mother, a woman who encourages her son's love of learning -- and the father, though he doesn't "get" all this snowflake stuff, still strives to respect his son's desires and loves and encourage him and do what he can regardless.
We made this into something a snowflake learning fest. Bentley's photos of snowflakes are available in an inexpensive format, Snowflakes in Photographs. More modern and beautiful are the books by Kenneth G. Libbrecht. We chose The Snowflake. This had enlarged photographs and my first grader used pattern blocks to recreate some of them, as well as making paper snowflakes for the window. We also took black paper (left out in the car so it would be cold) to catch snowflakes and look at them with a magnifying glass. We will be revisiting "snowflake studis" later on when he is older to get more into the science of them, as is covered in the Libbrecht book.
Overall, this book was great for supporting our curriculum, which presents science and math in hands on ways and includes a lot of biography with explanations of how scientists go about "doing science" -- but which is to also remind us that science without the human element is purposeless, and sometimes even dangerous.My Brother Loved Snowflakes: The Story of Wilson A. Bentley, the Snowflake Man Overview

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