As much a work of art as a testament to science, this revised, hardcover edition of the best-selling The Art of the Snowflake (now Capturing Snowflakes ) includes a laser-cut silver snowflake ornament in its cover and showcases 430+ images of snowflakes captured by the photo-microscope of the world’s leading expert on the subject, Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor of physics at Caltech who also served as a science consultant for Disney’s Frozen movies.   The snow may seem unvaried to the naked eye, but the microscope reveals an amazing menagerie of beautiful crystalline forms . Building on the pioneering work of Wilson Bentley (1865-1931), Libbrecht has developed techniques for capturing images of snow crystals in unprecedented detail. While wondering at the hundreds of exquisite snowflake portraits , find:   The science behind snowflakes, including how they form on a molecular level and the complex process that guarantees each one’s uniqueness Field notes from Libbrecht’s photographic expeditions to the frozen north The taxonomy of snowflakes and examples of each type: simple plates and prisms, columns and needles, capped columns, sectored plates, stellar plates, stellar dendrites, triangular crystals, double plates, split plates, split stars, and even rare twelve-branched snowflakes Quotations  about the wonder of snowflakes and nature from Aristotle, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and more This book is a breathtaking look at the works of art that melt in an instant.