Rae McCutcheon, age 9, of Havelnck, Ontario, for his question:

What are snow crystals?

A large puffy snowflake is made of a number of snow crystals. In, a cool cloud water vapor, which is a gas, turns into tiny fragments of ice. These fragments are too smell for our eyes to see. But they tend to gather in groups. When tiny fragments gather together in this way we say that they form crystals.

Crystals form in certain patterns. Crystals of frozen water vapor always form into a delicate six‑sided design. Tiny pockets of air trapped between the specks of ice and the ice itself join together to give the snow crystals a frothy white appearance. In one dainty six‑sided snow crystal there are millions of ice fragments and. perhaps millions of air pockets.

Sometimes a single snow crystal, dainty as a doily, falls as a small snowflake, But larger snow flakes are bundles of snow crystals.