You won’t surprise Russians with snow, although a huge number of people living in the tropics and near the equator have only seen it in the refrigerator for their entire lives. Surprisingly, more than 50 percent of the world's inhabitants have either never seen real snowfall, or have seen it once or twice in their lives, except for photographs and videos.
In the northern regions of Russia, snow cover lasts for six months or more, people are so accustomed to snow that they simply do not notice it, and in vain. A familiar phenomenon is fraught with a lot of mysteries, and many interesting facts can be told about it.
Unique, diverse, unique
Starting a story about snow and interesting facts related to it is worth it from this moment. A scientist physicist named John Nelson studied snowflakes for a long time and stated that they are all different - it is impossible to find two identical ones. According to him, there are more options for the structure of snowflakes than atoms in the entire Universe. It's hard to believe, but no one has really found two snowflakes of the same shape.
Snowflake is frozen water. Rising into the upper atmosphere, water vapor crystallizes, forming snow, which then falls to the ground. But water is not the main component of a snowflake, and not even its main component. Snow flakes are 95 percent airborne, which is why they are white in color, light in weight and able to plan slowly. Snow lays quietly, slowly, inaudibly - in this respect it is very different from rain.The rate of fall of snowfields to the earth averages 0.9 km per hour.
The usual color of snow is white. But this does not always happen. Rarely, but still anomalies occur that give snowflakes an unusual color. Red or pink snow lying in whole fields was noted in the polar regions - this shade is obtained due to the activity of chlamydomonas, snow algae. Someone was not afraid to even taste such snow - people claim that it looks like a watermelon, and this taste is again provided by Chlamydomonas.
But pink, red snow is not all. It can be orange, like falling out in 2007 in the Omsk region, and cream, as in Primorye. There are a number of reasons that can color snowflakes and deprive them of their usual white color, and in most cases we are talking about dust impurities. Dust rises into the atmosphere, and water vapor condenses on it, creating colorful snowflakes.
Other unusual and interesting facts about snow
Many people noticed that when walking in the snow a characteristic crunch is heard. And in dry frosty times it is heard especially clearly. It turns out that this sound is generated by numerous broken snowflakes - under the pressure of the foot, their rays break, and a creak is nothing more than the sound of millions of broken links. At low temperatures, snowfields become especially harsh and hard, and therefore the sound is heard more distinctly and stronger.
The same sound can be obtained by mixing salt and sugar in one bag - if you then squeeze this mixture.The reception is well known to sound engineers, it often replaces the real creak of snow in films and cartoons.
It is also worth noting that snow is not unique to our planet. It is also present on Mars, and on this planet two kinds of snow can be produced and go. It can be either ordinary or carbon dioxide. And as for our planet - occasionally, it can also occur in its most unexpected places. So, in 1949, snow fell over the Sahara desert. Not only did the snow not melt in flight, it lay on the sand and lay for about half an hour.
Snow as a hobby and hobby
John Nelson was far from the only person who explored the snow. The first photograph of a snowflake is dated 1885, it was taken by Wilson Bentley, who was so carried away that he took more than 5000 photographs, each of which captures a unique snowflake. In total, it took 46 years. Bentley was not a professional photographer, he was a farmer, who, obviously, was very interested in snow. And it was on the basis of his photographs that the hypothesis arose that there were no identical snowflakes, which was further confirmed.
Today we learned how to create snow artificially, growing the same snowflakes that form in nature. They are created in the laboratory of Libbrecht in the USA. But nature knows how to create unique things, and snow is no exception. Sometimes snowflakes fall on the ground, which can hardly be reproduced in the laboratory.
So, in April 1944, snowfall fell on Moscow from snowflakes of about 10 cm in diameter, which resembled the feathers of a peacock or ostrich, and were the size of a palm. The largest of the recorded snowflakes was about 38 cm in diameter, and it was discovered in 1887 in Montana.But such snowflakes are a rarity, because on average they do not exceed 5 mm in diameter. And with such dimensions, 1 cubic meter of snow can hold them in an amount of about 350 million.
The nature is diverse, and even the snow that every Russian habitually sees in the air and under his feet every winter can be surprising. Truly, the amazing is near!
