Wilson Bentley loved looking at snowflakes. But they would always melt before he could get a good look at them. So when he received a microscope for his fifteenth birthday, the first thing he did was figure out how to combine it with his camera equipment, thus inventing the photomicrograph camera.
Wilson spent the next fifty years taking thousands of micro-photographs of snowflakes. For each photo he had to go outside and catch a falling snowflake on blackboard. Next, he checked it with a magnifying glass to make sure he had a decent specimen. Then he carefully transferred it to a microscope slide, pressed it flat, and positioned it in the center of the glass. Cold work, but worth it to Wilson. He studied each flake to decide for sure if it was worth having its picture taken. If so, he centered the slide under the camera lens of the photomicrograph camera. He pointed the camera to the sky for a solid, clear background and took the picture. The photograph now preserved the flake forever. Where do snowflakes come from? High in the air a tiny dust particle drift through a cold cloud of water vapor. As the particle makes its way toward earth, vapor droplets stick to it and freeze.
The molecules of frozen water arrange themselves in intricate patterns, giving birth to a snowflake. A patch of snow two feet square and ten inches deep contains about one million snowflakes! The odds of two snowflakes being alike are about 1 in 105 million. With so many varieties, God has made sure won’t get bored with winter precipitation!