365 Picture Today Post

53/365 | Monday, February 22, 2021 | #365PictureToday

2 o'clock (Washington's Birthday)

Picture More | Symmetry | Picture Time

Since 2 o'clock occurs while I am at work, and I cannot take pictures at work due to proprietary teaching materials and student privacy issues, I was stumped about what to do for this picture.  I finally decided to take a picture of the Koch snowflake that I made for work last winter.  Mathematician Helge von Koch created the Koch snowflake based on the Koch fractal curve.  To make one simply start with an equilateral triangle.  At the midpoint of each side, another equilateral triangle is added.  This can continue indefinitely, but the hardest part in my example was cutting it out.  The cool thing about the Koch snowflake is that it encloses a finite area but has an infinite perimeter. 

Fun snowflake facts from the Mathnasium website:

• Snowflakes have six points and are hexagonal.

• Snowflakes have from 180 billion to 10 quintillion (1019) molecules of water.

• They fall at a rate of 3.1 miles per hour.

• There are 6 basic types of snowflakes based on their 3 dimensional shape: flat, column, stars, dendrite, lacy, needle, and capped column.

• The temperature of the air and the humidity where the snowflake forms determines the type of snowflake that will form. Dendrites form when the air temperature is between -8 degrees Fahrenheit to 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Snowflakes do not have perfect symmetry.

• A branch of geometry called fractal geometry helps explain the figures of snowflakes.