ABOUT SNOWFLAKES: Snow is a form of precipitation. Rising warm air carries water vapor high into the sky, where it cools and condenses into water droplets. Some vapor freezes into tiny ice crystals, which can attract cooled water drops to form snowflakes. As snowflakes fall, they meet warmer air and melt into raindrops, unless temperatures are below freezing close to the ground: then we get snow. A snow crystal is a single crystal of ice. It usually forms the shape of a hexagonal prism, but as the crystals grow, branches sprout from the corners, creating more complex shapes. Conditions such as temperature and humidity in the atmosphere can influence a snowflake's shape.
ABOUT COMPUTER MODELING: Computer modeling is used to simulate the structure and appearance both of static objects, such as building architecture, and of dynamic situations, such as a football game. Computer models can enable the user to test the consequences of choices and decisions. They can provide cutaway views that let you see aspects of an object that would be invisible in the real artifact, as well as visualization tools that can provide many different perspectives. Physical models that reproduce behavior are limited by the physics of the world, while computer models have much looser bounds. Physical models of living things can reproduce very few behaviors, compared to simulation models, and physical models simply cannot capture the sorts of species-level and conceptual-level phenomena that artificial life and artificial intelligence models do. Computer models enable you to run companies and civilizations, fight battles, play football games and evolve new species.
The American Meteorological Society, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the American Physical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
