#1116: FlowSnow

I’m fascinated by the mechanics of ice crystal formation.

The final, unique shape of one such crystal is a representation of its personal history as it falls through temperature and humidity gradients.

Today’s invention is a system which injects pure, hexagonal seed crystals into an engineering airflow stream at different points and then, by automated image analysis, determines statistically what gradients they have each encountered.

This provides a new form of flow monitoring for low-temperature systems.