Wilson Alwyn Bentley (1865-1931), famous for his photomicrographs of snow crystals, prepared sets of glass lantern slides of dew, frost and ice crystals. Many of these sets found their way to colleges and universities around the United States. The University of Wisconsin's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences donated their collection to the Schwerdtfeger Library in 2000. Shortly after, the ... Full description.

This site is all about snow crystals and snowflakes. The many facets of snow crystals are described here, along with attempts to understand their formation. This site includes collections of super-high-resolution snow crystal photos, as well as links to learn about snow crystal classifications and how to make snow crystal fossils. Included in the study of how snow crystals form, these researchers ... Full description.

This lesson plan provides instruction to teachers for creating a glacier in the classroom to demonstrate how glaciation affects landforms. Learning objectives include student understanding that as glaciers move, they create a variety of patterns on landforms by a process called glacial scraping, that the scraping patterns left by a glacier depend on how the glacier moved over the landform, and that ... Full description.

The Gulf of Maine Aquarium hosts this two-part activity. The focus is on seasonal changes in the mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Part 1 uses an atlas and satellite imagery to examine the geography of the region and the changing boundaries of the ice sheet. Part 2 tracks annual changes in sea ice. There is an animation page showing changes in ice cover around Antarctica during 1991, and links ... Full description.

This applet enables the user to create snowflakes from different crystals by choosing different temperature zones within a cloud. The crystal grows with each click of the mouse. Moving the mouse to a new temperature zone adds on a new layer. Full description.

This National Snow and Ice Data Center website presents a variety of general information about snow. It includes a question and answer section, which explains why snow is white, and the difficulties of forecasting snow, for example. There is a snow fact sheet, a glossary for snow terminology and weather terms, and a photo gallery of snow storms, ice storms, blizzards, avalanches, and other snow phenomena ... Full description.

NASA's Visible Earth is a searchable directory of images, visualizations, and animations of the Earth. The images are also listed under the following categories: agriculture, atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, human dimensions, hydrosphere, land surface, oceans, radiance or imagery, solid earth, locations, and satellites. Accompanying each image are credits, data about the image, the satellite it ... Full description.