Did you know ice and snow are two different things?
For people living in tropical climates like India, winter is the most exciting time of the year, not just because of the holidays and the carnivals associated with it, but also because it is the only time of the year when people get to experience the cold and the natural snow.
Youngsters are often more fascinated by snow than ice, simply because ice is an everyday part of their lives and they can come upon it whenever they open the refrigerators. On the contrary, it is hard to come across snow, unless they travel to the mountains during winter or visit snow parks. But, not many of them know the real difference between ice and snow. While both snow and ice happen to be the solid forms of water (H2O), they possess distinct properties.
What is ice?
Ice is the technical word for the solidified form of water regardless of how or where it was formed or the arrangement of the water molecules. This means that ice cubes that we use in our drinks are a form of ice.
What is snow?
Snow is the frozen and crystalline state of water that falls down the sky as precipitation, almost like rain or hail. When the frozen water turns into crystals due to water molecules, bonding to form the pattern, we get snowflakes. There are also other types of snow like rime and graupel that are not crystals. While rime is the form of snow created by rapid freezing of cold water droplets or fog into a cold surface; graupel is a kind of precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water condense on a snowflake. In simple words, snow is the ice that falls from the sky.
Interesting facts about ice and snow
Both snow and frost are formed out of water vapour present in the air. However, snow forms high up in the atmosphere and is less contaminated (only contains certain tiny and suspended dust particles), while frost forms close to the ground on solid surfaces such as tree branches and window panes.
Believe it or not, even though two snowflakes might appear to be identical in front of naked eyes or under magnification, the molecular composition of them is bound to be different.
Humans can form instant snow by throwing a glass full of freshly boiled water into the air on an exceptionally cold day, when the outside temperature is a few degrees below the freezing point.
To crystallize ice on demand, i.e., to convert it into snowflakes, one can place an unopened bottle full of distilled water in the refrigerator and let it get cold for 3 hours. Once the bottle is removed from the normal freezer and immediately shaken or quickly poured onto five to six ice cubes, it will slowly form into snow crystals.