Above: A hexagonal (six-sided) snow crystal, classified as a stellar dendrite. This crystal was photographed with an Olympus TG-6 camera after it landed on the sleeve of the authors fleece jacket.

The brilliantly shiny diamond is more than just pretty; it's one of the hardest minerals on Earth, with a name derived from the Greek word adámas, meaning unbreakable. Scientists have now engineered a ...

For the past decade, physicist Kenneth Libbrecht has been studying how ice crystals form, taking thousands of photographs of their intricate structures. He describes how he grows snowflakes in his lab ...

New research by chemist has shed new light on ice crystal formation by combining an electron backscatter with a large single crystal ice model. Scientists discovered that an ice crystal's flat sides ...