The swirling eddies of snow storms are a wonderful way to experience firsthand the beauty of a dynamical system. What’s more, it’s this large-scale chaotic behavior that leads to the production of trillions and trillions of snowflakes, each with individual structure and beauty.
Caltech physics professor Kenneth Libbrecht has put together an incredible site detailing pretty much everything you could want to know about snow flakes. There’s a lot to be had, including some incredible photo galleries [1, 2, 3], precision-built snow crystals, myth-debunking, and some empirically-based philosophical musings. My favorite bit: “If two identical snow flakes fell, my inquisitive friend, who would know?” Who, indeed.
