Snow Crystals

✍ Scribed by R. M. Peardon Donaghy

• Book ID: 102511526
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 92 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0738-1085
• DOI: 10.1002/micr.1920030302

✦ Synopsis

William Alwyn Bentley was born Feb. 9,1865, at the foot of Bolton Mountain in the Northeastern United States, of a most industrious father and a highly imaginative mother. Curiosity, then, and drive became characteristic of the young child.

A t the age of 15, he had exhausted the local available reading materials in science, mathematics, and Latin and was rapidly becoming the local pianist. His main interests, however, were in natural materials and forces. He developed an excellent collection of rocks and classified them one summer. In winter there was an abundance of snow. Every child in that part of the country knew snow-they walked in it, slid on it, threw it-but it was he who noted that this peculiar material was made up of thousands of separate flakes if one could but see them clearly enough. When he attempted to describe what he saw, no one listened because no one had taken the time to look.