Clifford A. Reiter, A Local Model for Snow Crystal Growth, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 23 4 (2005) 1111-1119.

Snow crystals have a rich diversity of forms with striking hexagonal symmetry. The two-dimensional types include dendrite, stellar, sector and plate forms. Physical studies have shown that the particular form of a snow crystal is dependent upon the temperature and saturation in the growth environment. We investigate a simple, local, two-dimensional model that has just two parameters exhibiting the desired diversity. The dendrite growth is especially realistic. We use the model to investigate the impact of varying conditions of growth.

See also: · Some Images and animations related to the paper [Images, and Animations] [Preprint] · A version on Quasicrystals: [Abstract] [Images, and Animations] [Preprint] · Some Boolean variants: [Abstract] [Images, and Animations] · Some Fuzzy variants: [Abstract] [Images, and Animations] · Gravner-Griffeath Snowflakes