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Article: Crystals of Water That Fall From the Sky
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- December 13, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Of all the tricks that water has up its sleeve -- its handiness as
a solvent, its high "specific heat" that makes boiling it so
difficult, its ability to form long molecule-to-molecule chains so
plants can pull it from the roots without needing moving parts --
perhaps none is as dazzling as its ability to turn into snow.
Snow is an improbable-looking form of precipitation. If you had
designed the world, you couldn't have come up with snow in a million
years. It wouldn't have occurred to you. After rain, you would have
thought of frozen rain -- hail. Maybe some sleet.
But not the 80 kinds of frozen water that scientists have found
can fall from the sky.
Everyone knows that Eskimos (the Inuit ...