Wednesday, November 08, 2006

I hope that you love winter and enjoy snow the way I do. I have a very dear friend from Russia, whom I love. I was talking to her on the phone the other day and she told me this story about snowflakes. One day an american phytopathologist (specialist skilled in diseases of plants) was tuning his new electronic digital microscope in his laboratory. It was in December of 1993. Unfortunately for him he couldn't find any insect to test his recently bought device. He looked out of the window with the hope to find something suitable there, but only felt worse, hopeless. It was snowing outside. But then a bright idea occured to him to put the snowflake under the microscope. And he did that, but his first attempts failed.To study an object under a digital microscope you need to put it onto a conductive base. In our case the phytopathologist took a cuptic plate and cooled it to the temperature of -3 C. That was the exact temperature outside the window. But snowflakes refused to stick to the plate and flew away every time the phytopathologist wanted to look at them under a microscope. Then the scientist coated the plate with the solution of methylcellulose, adhesive inert substance, which doesn't freeze at faint frost. And the snowflakes sticked! After the immersion of the snowflakes into liquid nitrogen they became extremely firm. The stage of the microscope was also cooled to the very low temperature. That was the victory!!! And eventually he got the pics of the snowflakes!