Preserving Snow Crystals | Hacker News Reader

Preserving Snow Crystals

its.caltech.edu

60 pointsjameslk13 comments

I'm not sure which technique they use but this person makes jewelry from snowflakes. They have videos showing their process, where they catch them on a tray and transfer them using a paintbrush to slide covers that are holding some chemical which capture their shape. Eyeballing it I think they're using the Formvar method.

https://www.preservedsnowflake.com/

https://youtube.com/@preservedsnowflakeco

Funny enough this person is actually where I stumbled upon the article submitted here. Danielle had linked it in one of the videos in a comment as part of an explanation of how it’s done. The jewelry is a wonderful application of the technique

Just yesterday I was watching a video from someone trying to make Formvar. It can make very thin layers that are transparent to electrons in an electron microscope. He needed to make 1,4-dioxane first, the solvent needed in its synthesis and apparently difficult to obtain from suppliers.

> It is possible to preserve newly fallen snow crystals, creating one's own snow crystal fossils.

Nitpick, but fossils are specifically records of life. Footprints left in petrified mud can be fossils. But a snowflake isn't alive, so a preserved snowflake can never be a fossil.

What if the snowflake nucleated around microbes in the air, as is common? [1] Would that be life-like enough, especially as the crystalline structure of the snowflake itself would reflect the microbe.

Or, what if the observer of the snowflake held the philosophical belief that we live in a single living universe, as did the ancient Stoics? [2]

It appears that we have at least two clear instances where preserved snowflakes can indeed be considered fossils.

[1] https://asm.org/articles/2019/january/snow-is-coming-whats-t...

[2] https://modernstoicism.com/modern-stoicism-expert-panel-post...

What would be the correct word? Specimen?

An ichnofossil is the fossil of activity of a living thing.

But specimen seems like it might work as long as you’re not using wet / embalmed with it.

Vitrification maybe almost works, but doesn’t seem to really work for a snowflake.

Aquastasis ? (Joking)

Apologies. After reading this I’m now wracking my brain trying to figure out what would be the correct word to apply to creating a /mold/ model / sample of a snowflake.

I believe it would just be called a casting or impression, even if it were an ancient object that had been preserved across geological ages.

Thank you! That makes a ton of sense. I somehow couldn’t make that connection mentally.

Now we just need some special rule to make them into fossils… maybe if they’re over 20,000 years old- double the specimen quasi rule.

Petrified? Like petrified dunes? Simply preserved?

Imprint, maybe?

Neat! I travel for work a fair bit and saw a local craft sale in a mostly fly in northern community with this. The lady mentioned using super glue and then transferred into silver and gold jewelry. Success rate did not sound high for individual flakes but I guess the winter is long… try again.

"Leave the slide outside or in your freezer for a week or two until the glue hardens."

A week or two? That's a huge margin there

Glues tend to slow down and become somewhat unreliable at low temps (in terms of setting), so that margin might be realistic. It beats freezing it indefinitely so I don't think there's any value to determining a more concrete range

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