Wondering

Various versions of this idea been around at least since the 1930s, but I was a little saddened to see it in a recent book* by science journalist Phillip Ball: The snow crystal (not snowflake**) certainly invites speculations, doesn’t it? So small and pure, yet containing much beauty, variety,...

Fog often arises from a gentle mixing of air. Some of the air will be warmer and with more vapor, while other air is cooler and with less vapor. In wet areas near the ground, as well as over water, the vapor is often near saturation for its temperature (i.e., near 100% humidity). When near-saturated...

Sun pictures are not always simple circles. Back in 2017, my youngest daughter and I went on a backpacking trip that started during an eclipse. The above photo shows the ground shadows in the parking lot near the start of the eclipse. If one wasn’t paying attention, one might not realize how weird they...