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Quarto Publishes 'The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry'
5 November 2015
Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor of physics at Caltech who studies the molecular dynamics of crystal growth, has authored a couple of books on snowflakes. But this is the first he's co-authored with his wife Rachel Wing, a park ranger in Monrovia, Calif.
Together they tell the story of how water vapor turns into snow crystals in 144 pages with examples of snowflakes from all over the world. Illustrated with microphotography of individual snow crystals, the books also dips into the history of snowflake observations mixed with an entertaining blend of tales of hunting snowflakes, snowflakes in literature and the art and the science of snowflakes.
Capturing these fleeting and fragile creations was no small task. To see the individual snow crystals at their best, you have to catch them before they hit the ground. And you can't run back to the lab to photograph them with your microscope. You have to do it in the field.
The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry is available for $18.19 ($24 list) with 270 color photos. For more information see the news release below.
The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry
Take a deeper look at the unique, hidden beauty of winter with the world's foremost snowflake expert.
From ten thousand feet above the Earth, a snowflake begins its fall. Its journey starts when ice forms around a nucleus of dust and is blown by the winds through clouds where the crystals blossom into tiny ice stars. Because it weighs next to nothing, a snow crystal may take hours to fall -- finally landing where Caltech physicist Kenneth Libbrecht can use microphotography to record the tiny, intricate, frozen artistry of the snowflake. In The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry, Libbrecht teams with author Rachel Wing to create the most fascinating book on snowflakes ever published. This book defines the art and science of snowflakes for generations.
Join Libbrecht and Wing as they charmingly chronicle the creation of snow crystals, both in nature and in the laboratory. The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry touches the hand of Mother Nature, showing incredible microphotography of individual snow crystals from all over the world. The book tells the history of snowflake observations mixed with an entertaining blend of tales of hunting snowflakes, snowflakes in literature and the art and the science of snowflakes, to bring a flurry of delightful snowflakes into the hands of warm-bodied humans everywhere. There's extraordinary diversity of different snowflake types, all the result of ice freezing in the clouds. Fascinating to look at, yet there's still much to be learned about how water vapor transforms itself into these intricate crystalline structures.
A snowflake is a temporary work of art. To capture the images in this book, each snowflake was plucked from the air as it fell and then rapidly photographed. In mere minutes, sometimes seconds, a fallen snowflake starts to lose its shape. The sharp corners begin to round and after a brief time many of its delicate features are gone. No two snowflakes look exactly alike when they fall, but their uniqueness is soon lost on the ground. Once inside a snowbank, intricately patterned snowflakes transform into tiny, formless lumps of ice. To see the best snowflakes -- actually, individual snow crystals -- you have to catch them when they are fresh. In their new book, Libbrecht and Wing explain the science of these crystals, the many different kinds and their photography process.
This captivating book is a journey into the winter clouds, watching snowflakes as they are born and grow, while examining the origin of their form and symmetry. In all, The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry is an appreciation of both the science and the beauty behind every snowflake.
About the Authors
Kenneth Libbrecht is a professor of physics at Caltech, where he studies the molecular dynamics of crystal growth, especially how ice crystals grow from water vapor, which is essentially the physics of snowflakes. He has authored several books on this topic, including The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry, The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry and The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry. He lives in Pasadena with his wife, Rachel Wing. They have two children.
Rachel Wing is a park ranger for the city of Monrovia, California, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. With a background in geology, she now specializes in balancing wilderness preservation with wildfire safety for nearby residents. Rachel loves to hike and climb in these hills, especially on the rare occasions when snow graces their desert-like plants. She has been accompanying Ken Libbrecht as a snowflake chaser for nearly 20 years.