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Inspiration: 10 Rarest Clouds

And just for the heck of it, the 10 Rarest clouds.

View the rest at Cool Stuff

Inspiration: Snowflakes

Snowflakes and snow crystals are made of ice, and pretty much nothing more.  A snow crystal, as the name implies, is a single crystal of ice.  A snowflake  is a more general term; it can mean an individual snow crystal, or a few snow crystals stuck together, or large agglomerations of snow crystals that form "puff-balls" that float down from the clouds.

The water molecules in an ice crystal form a hexagonal lattice, as shown at right (the two structures show different views of the same crystal).  Each red ball represents an oxygen atom, while the grey sticks represent hydrogen atoms.  There are two hydrogens for each oxygen, so the chemical formula is H2O.  The six-fold symmetry of snow crystals ultimately derives from the six-fold symmetry of the ice crystal lattice.

A Snow Crystal primer
Snowcrystals.com

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