Thursday, January 17, 2008

Snowflake Bentley

In the late 1800s, a man named Wilson Bently, sometimes calls “Snowflake Bentley,” loved winter and studied snowflakes. He spent his life trying to take a picture of snowflakes. People thought he was a bit strange.

Finally, on January 15, 1885, he was able to take a picture of a snowflake through his microscope. He ended up taking more than 6,000 pictures of snowflakes in his life. He proved that no two snow crystals are alike. Actually, the chances of two snowflakes being exactly alike are about one million trillion (that is a 10 followed by 17 zeros-try writing this out).
Meterologists think that there are one trillion, trillion, trillion (a 10 with 35 zeros) different types of snowflakes. “Snowflake Bentley” became world famous for his discovery, but not until years later.
Bentley poetically described snowflakes as "tiny miracles of beauty" and snow crystals as "ice flowers."

No comments: