Snow crystals -3

I will illustrate this later with a few diagrams, produced by SKITCH.

I think I might be beginning to see some lights there and over there along the horizon, very faint, but slightly encouraging.

It is like this. We normally see a block of ice and somehow believe that ice has cubic and three dimensional structures. It must be wrong. That is to say, an ice block is not composed of cubes, where each cube is looking like a dice.

My thought experiment is as follows.

If you have a dice like cube and assume that each connecting point (corner) has three degrees of freedom (each corner is flexible) then you can squash it.

Before doing that, let us imagine that we have a square, a planar square and that each corner has similar degrees of freedom. With this square, we can apply pressure and change its shape, so that two opposite corners have 104.5 degrees.

So, remaining two opposite corners will have 75.5 degrees. Quantum mechanics is saying that with this diamond shape two water molecules can be hydrogen bonded in a stable manner.

Of course, planar molecules are not yet crystals. We must stack them. In order to stack two molecular layers to form a stable and minimum sized solid crystal the only way to do so would be to slide these two opposite planes so that their side view will also look like a diamond.

So, we now have a squashed diamond shaped cube like structure. It now daunts on me that it is in fact the unit of any ice in this universe. You can now imagine that further stacking can take place above and below and sideways.

Interestingly, 14.5 degrees is the deviation from 90 degrees. There must be something here, too. However, the main point here must be that snow crystals must represent the normal shape of ice, solid water molecules.

Here, I am thinking of the Snow brand milk and its logo. If I remember rightly each of the six arms has an arrow like structure. Am I simply imagining it? Or, is it from my memories of snow crystal pictures?

Arrows are normally associated with progression. In this case random contacts in air turbulence leading to next layer of water molecules, if and only if the right orientation is achieved in the contacting process.

I think this explains why snow crystals can spread arms outwardly. However, it is not yet clear why there are usually six arms. It must be to do with this 14.5 degrees, I think...

also, why same arm lengths, one end does not need to know what its opposite end is doing, because random stacking, why flat,

we may think ice x snow, but it is snow, quantum mechanical ice is snow, bulk ice hides it, quantum mechanics shown macroscopic is the point

パエ－リャの旅行ガイド - ボルネオ北部サピ島の生き物達

これはイグアナではない。イグアナは家内のメキシコ人の友達が言うには片手で持てる程小さくて、メキシコでは焼トカゲにして食べるとの事。動画のトカゲは、ずっと大きくて、体長１メ－トル以上はあった。

これは、当日見かけた２匹目のオオトカゲで、ジェティ－から歩いて100メ－トル程の海辺のゴミ捨て場でウロウロしていた。最初の１匹は、木陰でビ－ルを飲んでいたら、数メ－トル先に裏山から出て来て悠然と歩いていた。回りには人が沢山いたのに、気にしないようだ。間違いなくやぶの中に住んでいると思う。

戦時中、食料として南洋の旧日本軍の兵士たちが「トカゲ」を捕まえて食べていた、という事をよく聞くが、日本にいる小さなトカゲを想像していたので、さぞかしひもじい思いをしていたのだろうとの思っていたが、違うのかも知れない。

兎に角、慌てて逃げる事をしないので、見ていて面白い。３０分の間に２匹も出て来たので、山の中には沢山住んでいると想像している。



直ぐ近くで、女の子達がキャ－キャ－が騒いでいるので見に行くと、今度は野生のイノシシ、これも逃げようとはしない。然も、5,　6頭の親子連れで出て来た。観光客が入れる部分はとても限られているので、裏山から出て来たのは間違いないが、サピ島自体は小さな島なので、普段は矢張り、木の根とか食べているのだろう。ごみだけで繁殖できるとは思えないからだ。



テレビの番組などでは、ブタを丸焼きにするが、イノシシは食べないのだろうか？今度、聞いてみたい。と言うか、また出て来るか、見に行きたい！おやつ、あげたい！

Snow crystals - 2

quantum mechanical stability at 104.5 degrees

hydrogen bonding

in-isotropic and turbulent atmosphere, gravitational acceleration,
geomagnetic field lines, perhaps even solar radiation

macroscopic instability of momentarily connected water molecules

金平糖

I may be terribly wrong, but I will say it anyway because what I am going to say is probably not the point. In any event, I will have to amplify on this. My naive thinking is as follows.

If water molecules are quantum mechanically stable with 90 degrees angle between oxygen-hydrogen arms then it probably means that you only need 4 water molecules to form a minimum cubic structure. However, if you come to think about it it is already a mini ice crystal on its own.

If bonding continues and if you get, eventually, a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm ice cube you will still know that it is of regular cubic lattice structure. And, it is not very interesting.

However, the dynamical process itself before this ice cube formation is not a mystery. Water molecules coming into random contact with random orientation will be rejected from forming a structure except only those lucky ones with the right orientation, perhaps in air turbulence or perhaps in some free waters.

We know, however, that it is not right, not at all. The angle is not right. It is not 90 degrees, but 104.5 degrees.

So, although I cannot visualize immediately how bonding scheme works and what the intermediate structure would be looking like in this process a lot of water molecules will have been rejected from participation in crystal formation and only those with hydrogen affinity will remain to form some sort of ice crystals.

However, these primitive baby ice crystals will not be being formed looking like an infinite addition of proper 90 degrees ice cubes end to end. This is because the property of its starting block (water molecules) does not have 90 degrees in it.

Nonetheless, they would like to be bonded, because of the quantum mechanical affinity. The net result would be looking like star fish, I think, as we are all familiar with.

Anyway, because the angle is not 90 degrees the bonding orientation will be different from what we would normally imagine from 90 degrees. Quite how different, I do not know. I do not have access to a super computer.

Put poetically, the progression will be slanted, I think. OK, we will still get a chunk of large ice crystals, but because of this non-90 degrees property their surfaces will be unstable, more unstable compared with metal lattice structure.

That is to say, they will start melting at the surface, not from deep inside the crystal, I think. Metal blocks will start melting in one go and as a whole chunk, not gradually and slowly from surface inwards.

Actually, the arm length also may matter, if you come to think about it...Or, does it? Also, the angle difference of 10.5 degrees. Is it a multiple of something eventual?

I still have a long way to go from understanding the apparent flatness of the ice crystals. OK, you have gravity and all that in the atmosphere, but strong turbulence will almost certainly make it isotropic, at least instantaneously, during seed core formation.

I need to sleep on this, for the moment...