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Talk:Ice crystal

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Edits[edit]

I made some significant changes to this article. I came to it to learn about clouds and ice crystals and rainfall, but I did not see any information. So I tried to improve things a little.

• Are symmetrical hexagon patterns unique in ice crystals?
• What is the relationship between ice crystals and rainfall, and in what parts of the world?

-- Sy / ^(talk) 12:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Onderwijsgek ! It's fine to show ice crystals in their context but in an encyclopedia it is also interesting to access these phenomena with closer views like this one http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFleur_de_givre_L.jpg ! Both pictures might have been worthy. Regards --Cquoi (talk) 09:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No explanation and no answer from Onderwijsgek !--Cquoi (talk) 20:34, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why Onderwijsgek deleted this close and detailed picture of ice crystals ? No explanation and no answer from Onderwijsgek four years later ! --Cquoi (talk) 08:17, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2023 and 28 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Movingqlong (article contribs). Peer reviewers: ChemEnjoyer.

— Assignment last updated by RS UBC800 (talk) 21:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone,

As you can see from the previous topic, I'm hoping to improve this article. I learned a bit about ice crystals in a class a while ago and hope it will give me a some idea about what to search to find some good sources to verify things. I hope to add citations to the "Formation" section. Specifically, I think I'll try to emphasize how temperature and vapor pressure affect crystal formation and add context to other things like how ice crystals get electrified in the first place. Thanks!

--Movingqlong (talk) 21:36, 11 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi everyone,

If you are following this page, you will see that I have made many changes to the article. I have restructured the lead, the "Formation" section, removed the "Geometry" section, and added "Weather Phenomena" and "Detection" sections.

For the lead, I removed the "atomic ordering on various length scales" because I had asked a non-chemistry friend to read the article and they didn't understand what that meant. The purpose of the assignment is to make the article more "general public friendly" so I strived to make it easier to read.

In the "Formation" section, I retained most of the information already there and found citations for them. I also merged the information from "Geometry" into here. This is because how square (and trigonal and cubic) crystals form is what dictates their structure, so it made sense to categorize it in "Formation". The part about the water molecule geometry is included in the first paragraph of the section. I also expanded on depositional growth and included a new bit about nucleation.

The "Weather Phenomena" and "Detection" sections are expansions of existing information in the article like how ice crystals make up cirrus clouds, and how they are detectable by differential reflectivity weather radars. I also moved the atmospheric optics in "Weather Phenomena" to make it more cohesive, as I don't think it belongs in "Formation". Regarding the "Detection" section, I tried to make it more "general public friendly" by describing how differential reflectivity worked and gave a reasoning (the engine accumulating ice) to why someone would want to detect ice crystals in the first place. I described how ice crystals get electrified (friction in clouds) but I couldn't find any source for detectable electrified ice crystals so I removed it from the article. If anyone can find a source for that, please feel free to add it in where you see fit.

I included new images from WikiCommons to better showcase what ice crystals are. The first two images are to show the geometry and structure of typical ice crystals. The previous images looked like hoar frost and wasn't distinctive. The "ice crystals on the beach" image also didn't show anything special. I also changed the image that showed an optical halo; I think this image is less distracting and clearly shows the halo and the cirrus clouds. Additionally, I changed the caption of the image of the snowflake on the gradient-coloured background to better reflect the new content in the article.

Throughout, I added sources to the content and changed up the sentence structure to remove superfluousness and to favour active voice.

Finally, I have some ideas to continue expanding the article. Further detail into which environmental conditions (temperature and humidity) form which crystals (plates, needles, dendrites, etc.) would be great. More context on how trigonal, cubic, and square crystals differ from hexagonal crystals regarding weather phenomena should also be explored.

I hope you find the new edits useful and interesting. Thanks for reading!

--Movingqlong (talk) 01:33, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]