Wilson Alwyn Bentley (1865-1931), famous for his photomicrographs of snow crystals, prepared sets of glass lantern slides of dew, frost and ice crystals. He obtained thousands of photomicrographs of individual ice crystals over the course of his lifetime. Images in this collection are scanned from glass lantern slides. Most snow crystals found in nature will fit into one of these seven main categories: ... Full description.

This applet provides a simulation of the type of precipitation that results from adjusting the temperature (dry bulb and wet bulb) at different altitudes. An updraft in the cloud can be produced in order to see its influence on precipitation. The precipitation types that are simulated include snowflakes/ice crystals, supercooled droplets, raindrops, drizzle, sleet, snow grains, and freezing rain or ... 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 reference page serves as a precursor to an activity on fusion reactions within stars. It explains that in the evolutionary path of high mass stars, once stars are five times or more massive than our Sun they reach the red giant phase and, being unstable, they progress from red giant to supernova. While many of the more common elements are made through nuclear fusion in the cores of stars, it ... Full description.

In this undergraduate meteorology course, students learn about the Bergeron process of precipitation formation, precipitation types, predicting lake effect precipitation, and estimating the liquid equivalent of snowfall. They may respond to questions as they work through the lessons. A review question is available from the tutorials page. Full description.

This virtual field trip to Stone Mountain Georgia includes both a narrative and photographs of such features as flow banding, tourmaline pods, and several types of xenoliths. Intrusive granite and diabase dikes are shown at both the east quarry and old route 78 locations where products of weathering such as saprolite, kaolinite, halloysite, and gibbsite reside. Photographs of an area of the east quarry ... Full description.

These resources on rock deformation are designed to help educators meet the new national science standards. The Rock Deformation Gallery displays illustrations from the Hall of Planet Earth, which has two informative overviews: Deformed Rocks; and Deforming Rocks in the Laboratory: Deformed Marble Cylinders. Also available is Deformed Conglomerate in the Hall of Planet Earth, which has three annotated ... Full description.

In this activity students will investigate what happens to salt water when it freezes. Observations of densities and salt concentration (by measuring conductivity) will be made. These results will be compared with the densities and conductivity conditions found in sea ice cores (columns of frozen sea water taken from the ocean around Antarctica). Full description.

This activity gives students an opportunity to learn about the elements created in the cores of high-mass stars by fusion reactions. They will discover that all stars start by burning hydrogen and end up creating many heavier elements inside their cores, elements that will be released into space when it dies in a supernova explosion. Students associate a layer with an element that is being produced ... Full description.

At this site students will learn that in addition to making elements, supernovae scatter them. They learn that the elements that are made both inside the star as well as the ones created in the intense heat of the supernova explosion are spread out into the interstellar medium. These are the elements that make up stars, planets and everything on Earth including ourselves. Except for hydrogen and some ... Full description.