A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z                    HOME ABOUT CATEGORIES SITE MAP COPYRIGHT ADVERTISE CONTACT entire Web this site snow It is often said that no two snowflakes are alike. While this is hard to prove, individual samples can be captured on a chilled glass microscope slide and preserved with artist's spray fixative. All are six-sided and the more ornate kind, called dendritic snowflakes, form when the air temperature is between -12 °C to -16 °C (10 °F and 3 °F ). Typical snowflakes fall at a rate of a meter or two per second; assuming 1.5 m/s and a cloud base of 3,000 m (roughly the height of nimbostratus clouds) gives a descent time of 20 minutes. One of the great urban legends is that the Inuit have n words for "snow," where n is a large number. This story may have started in 1911 when anthropologist Franz Boaz casually mentioned that the Inuit-he called them "Eskimos," using the derogatory term of a tribe to the south of them for eaters of raw meat-had four different words for snow. With each succeeding reference in textbooks and the popular press the number grew to as many as 400 words. A problem with trying to pin down exactly how many Inuit words there are for snow and/or ice, or for anything else, is that the various dialects of Inuit are polysynthetic, which means that words can effectively be made up on the spot by concatenating various particles to the root word. For example, the suffix -tluk, for "bad," might be added to kaniktshaq, for "snow," to give kaniktshartluk, "bad snow." This can give rise to any number of snow terms, from akelrorak ("newly drifting snow") to mitailak ("soft snow over an opening in an ice floe"). Also on this site: Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy & Sustainable Living Encyclopedia of History Transport Concepts & Designs (partner site) BACK TO TOP