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Printer-Friendly ModeLearning about snow more difficult than expected
January 17, 2005 —
All I have to say is, what's the deal with the weather? I'm not talking solely about Michigan, but all across the entire world. Tsunamis in India, mudslides in California, and snow in Nevada!
Nevada is a desert and they received nearly three feet of snow! And that's what this column is primarily about, snow.
About a week ago, my five-year-old niece approached me with a novel question, "Uncle Matt how is snow made?" to which I replied, "I don't know." You see, sometimes the simplest of questions are the ones that confuse me.
I have lived in Michigan my entire life, and yet I have no idea how snow is formed.
Not wanting to let my little niece down, I proceeded on a journey of enlightenment to find an answer more appropriate than "I don't know." I went to the only place I could think of where I could find the answer, the Internet.
Surprisingly, typing in "how is snow formed" into any search engine, it will prompt 2,455,543,987 sites about it. It was hard to believe that many sites are devoted to snow.
Also a surprise was the fact that after seven pages, I came across my first adult site link, which astonished me. Usually those types of Web sites are on the first page (not that I have any type of experience in that sort of thing).
Ultimately, the Internet was deemed useless. How can a person trust a site that says when it snows, it is because God is shaking off his dandruff (I fell for that one too many times - not that gullible anymore).
Then it occurred to me that I have access to some of the greatest minds of our time, SVSU professors.
I talked with Department Chair and Professor of Chemistry Dr. George Eastland.
"I'm not very knowledgeable about such processes, but here's what I (think) that I know," he said. "I think that snow forms when moisture in the air gets cold enough to begin to freeze. I think I recall that the process is aided..."
I began to realize that Dr. Eastland started sounding a lot like the teacher from the Charlie Brown TV specials, and that I have the attention span of a ten-year-old.
After the interview I thanked Dr. Eastland and was even more confused. But I realized that since my niece is only five years old, I could say anything and she would probably believe me.
Again, I'm the type of person that comes up with clever ideas and comebacks hours or even days after the initial remark.
Still, I don't want her to grow up like me, believing in ridiculous things, such as Hawaii not being a real state because its not connected to the United States or that scientists have actually cloned a cat (yeah right, we cloned a cat, sure).
So I went out and started to ask random students on campus whether they knew how snow was formed or not.
Here are some of the best replies: "I don't know;" "I think it's made from the clouds, dude;" "Snow is like on the ground, so like it becomes, no, no, like once it hits the ground it becomes a part of the earth and is basically then a piece of us;" and finally, "It's just God shaking off his dandruff."
So I still have no idea how snow is formed, but I guess it's no big deal. I mean I've made it this far without knowing, and I think my niece will be just fine. If anything, I learned a lot about myself while trying to find this answer, although I haven't figured out what yet. But I'm sure I learned something.