Talk:Snowflake

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 October 2020 and 20 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Noah.hirshorn, Joayer, UMightyMet, Baudette, Boomersooner16, PaulMcGlynn, IJThomas, KYsnowmaker. Peer reviewers: IJThomas.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled

Formerly, snowflake dingbat characters were present on this page, but someone has removed them:

❄ ❅ ❆

— Monedula 06:27, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Disambig?

Is this really a disambiguation page? It's half-article? Jobjörn (Talk | contribs) 15:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

source

"he biggest snowflake measured fifteen inches wide and eight inches thick, in 1887, in Montana, United States." source? Doidimais Brasil 01:18, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I definitely remember reading that in Guinness Book of World Records. --24.222.149.188 00:21, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

Should snowflake redirect to snow since that seems to be the most common usage and the dab goes back to snowflake (disambiguation)? Sonic3KMaster^(talk) 00:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Move to main

If you were to ask random people to think of the what the word "snowflake" means, all of them would choose what this article refers to. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 00:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

For once, I was trying not to rock the boat with a new article. If you think it should be just under snowflake, which does make sense, where would we put the disambig page? Thegreatdr (talk) 00:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The act has already been done (not be me). Everything else is at snowflake (disambiguation). Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 04:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done Yes, tell me if there are any problems. Plastikspork (talk) 05:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:Snowflake/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Tripleintegral (talk • contribs) 18:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Here are just some initial impressions: —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tripleintegral (talk • contribs) 18:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Lead section

I'm a bit uncomfortable with this section as it assumes that everyone knows what a snowflake is. It should reworded to start off with a statement of what it is (eg, A snowflake is a blob of frozen cloud drops). I think it goes into a bit too much detail about the formation/structure which really belongs in a body section. Furthermore, much of this appears to be copied from the Snow article.

This whole article was once in the snow article, but was split off in order to prevent the snow article from becoming too large. I've added a reasonable lead sentence, per your comment above. It seems hard not to talk much about snow formation within the lead, because it helps explain the variety of shapes seen in snowflakes. Thegreatdr (talk)

Well, many details in the lead are repeated in the body sections, so perhaps it would be better to just remove it. Triplestop (talk) 17:31, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I removed one line from the lead per your suggestion. Removing any more information from the lead would be problematic, as the lead would no longer summarize the article below, which would violate MoS. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Sources

All sources appear to be reliable. Triplestop (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I apologize for my delay, I have been very very busy lately. I will try to get this wrapped up soon. Triplestop x3 01:17, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me know. Thegreatdr (talk) 01:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Checklist

1. Well written?:

Prose quality: Y

Manual of Style compliance: Y lead section addressed

2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:

References to sources: Y

Citations to reliable sources, where required: Y

No original research: Y

3. Broad in coverage?:

Major aspects: Y

Focused: Y

4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:

Fair representation without bias: Y

5. Reasonably stable?

No edit wars, etc. (Vandalism does not count against GA): Y

6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?: {{subst:#if: |{{{images}}}| Pass }}

Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales: Y

Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions: Y

Overall:

Pass or Fail: Y

After reviewing the content and the sources, I believe that this article is sufficiently comprehensive to pass GA. Triplestop x3 22:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Can they bee seen?

I'm confused. Can snowflakes be seen with the naked eye? They are two contrary pictures and the information tells me you need a microscope to see it or a magnifier. So how big is it? ¬¬¬¬ NeverWinter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.207.238.73 (talk) 13:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Really big ones can. i have :)

                   -Snowflakejournal August 2013  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Snowflakejournal (talk • contribs) 06:01, 25 August 2013 (UTC) 

Symmetry

The article says

A non-aggregated snowflake often exhibits six-fold "radial" symmetry.

Are there other kinds? I don't think I've seen one, and all the examples on the page are six-fold. JöG (talk) 21:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, if a snowflake is (approximately) symmetrical at all, then it exhibits (approximate) six-fold symmetry. Never five-fold or seven-fold or any other -fold. But there may be non-symmetric snowflakes, e.g. if a flake is broken and then continues to grow. -Arch dude (talk) 23:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Here you'll find one with 3-fold symmetry and no 6-fold symmetry [[1]] Olli Niemitalo (talk) 20:17, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

How can "often" be reconciled with the figure of 0.1% given at the end of the paragraph?

Artificial Snowflakes Possible?

Is it possible to artificially make snowflakes whose crystal hexagonal patterns resemble that of the natural ones? --Roland 04:31, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Crystal shapes

This article seems to avoid discussion of the different shapes that snow crystals can take. It does mention hollow columns in passing, but there are no pictures of these, nor of the unmentioned needles. The other types (dentrites and plates) are not mentioned, even though all the images are of these two shapes. Was this information omitted on purpose, and if so, why? --Aurochs (Talk | Block) 17:03, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure we just haven't gotten around to adding it yet. Here are some useful sources showing how crystal shape depends on temperature and humidity:

• A Snowflake Primer
• Temperature, humidity shape snow crystals
• Snowflake Chemistry - Answers To Common Questions

-- Beland (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Nature of snowflakes

I'm no expert but, the opening section of this article, defining a snowflake; "Snowflakes are conglomerations of frozen ice crystals", would seem to me at variance with the article Crystals in the section on Ice; "A single snowflake is typically a single crystal".

I wonder which is correct?

Also under The section "Formation" in this article we read ; "Because water droplets are so much more numerous than the ice crystals due to their sheer abundance, the crystals are able to grow to hundreds of micrometers or millimeters in size at the expense of the water droplets".

Micrometers or millimeters?. A micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter and the single 'crystals' referred would seem to be rather smaller than a millimeter, surely not the size of a football.

Perhaps this article is correct by intilially defining snowflakes as conglomerations of ice crystals, Polycrystalline?

The phrase "...are much more numerous...due to their sheer abundance", seems, well, like saying something is large because is is big.

I don't wish to be pedantic, but it does get confusing when terms are used inconsistently.

Johnny Cyprus (talk) 13:39, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Formation section not displaying correctly.

An entire paragraph seems to be inside some box and extends horizontally off the screen. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be doing, so don't know how to fix it. 74.128.43.180 (talk) 08:00, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

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Incomplete scope

While it claims to be about "ice crystals which form snow", this article appears to be exclusively about dendritic snow crystals. It should include other forms of snow "flake", e.g. platelets, needles and columns. See, for example: Ski wax#Snow properties. I regard this to be a major problem with the article to not reflect snow science or to recognize how the different shapes relate to other types of precipitation. User:HopsonRoad 23:07, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

See: The International Classification for Seasonal Snow on the Ground Prepared by the ICSI-UCCS-IACS Working Group on Snow Classification for more definitive, in-depth information. User:HopsonRoad 03:17, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD

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