Ever since the tender age of 3, we kids across America  have been taught that no two snowflakes are alike.  In fact, using scissors we were taught how to make a six-sided symmetrical snowflake out of a sheet of paper.  Just add scribbling with a crayon, and voila! -- Mom puts it on the refrigerator right next to last week's fingerpainting. 

Now that we're big kids, though, it's our goal to use big-kid toys to make snowflakes.  So the project here is to model the growth of a snowflake with a computer program. 

To do this, we're going to use a model called "DIFFUSION LIMITED AGGREGATION," which is big-vocabulary for saying that the shape is determined by the random diffusion of water molecules onto the existing flake.  (Which way is easier to say??) 

Please take a look at the rest of this page for all sorts of snowflake-growth topics such as:
 

SNOWFLAKE SHAPES

DIFFUSION

OUR SPIFFY MODEL OF DENDRITIC GROWTH

OUR HOT APPLET OF DENDRITIC GROWTH

THE RESULTS OF OUR HOT APPLET OF DENDRITIC GROWTH

LINKS, THANKS, AND REFERENCES

(By now you're wondering what "Dendritic" means -- it means "tree-like!")

For raving about how great our product is, contact:

Jon "Code-Boy" Erickson: jerickso@hmc.edu
Seth "WebMeister" Foreman:  sforeman@hmc.edu
Valerie "Valgorithm" Arndt:  varndt@hmc.edu