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Maine Samplers addendum Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin |
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SUMMARY: Impressed by the extraordinary beauty of snowflakes, Wilson Bentley spent his lifetime improving recording and photographing their striking uniqueness. The simple text and large, colorful woodcuts of this biography are enhanced by sidebars describing his experiments with microphotography and other biographical data. HONORS:
[Note to educators: many of the following Sampler activities result in interactive products. They also contain unique and/or quality content available to other students as resource material. Such products show that their creators fully understand their topics and can apply and communicate that understanding in an inviting manner. Such activities provide librarians with collaboration opportunities to help teachers and students with communication options and implementation as well as cataloging, housing, accessing, and showcasing products.] 1. Wilson Bentley used one of the first cameras that incorporated a microscope. He used it to document snowflake designs and to make their beauty available to everyone. Explore the history of filming small things, including those invisible to the naked eye. Create a scrapbook in an approved format* that recounts that history. Include photographic examples. Include both aesthetic results as well as scientific advancement, such as medicine. Which of Bentley's ideas or techniques remain in use today, and which have been enhanced or altered or radically changed? For instance, his technique of surrounding the snowflake to be photographed with other snowflakes is still used today to keep the tips of THE snowflake from subliming, or losing the crispness of its edges.
You may want to reproduce winners of Nikon's International Small World Competition (N Y Times Nov. 23, '99, D5) or organize a similar contest for your school.
2. Explore the history of filming LARGE things, following the directions above, and including the impact on space exploration. 3. Every year youngsters (and adults) make snowflakes as decorations. Learn how to create 'perfect' snowflakes, accurate as well as beautiful. Now design an informative flyer on how to do this. Include a plan for suitable distribution of your flyers. Use two sets of criteria as you design, one regarding 'publishing' protocol and standards, the other regarding what constitutes an excellent 'how-to'. When your work measures your goals on the two rubrics, publish your how-to and distribute according to your plan. (For some guidance on what a good how-to is like, browse the handicraft section of your library. Also, before you submit your design, test it out on other students and ask them to suggest improvements, especially what is missing.)
4. One computer artist has taken some of Bentley's landmark snowflake photographs and transformed them into stunning animations that are like crystalline light shows. His name is Rick Doble, and his work may be experienced at http://doble.interspeed.net/newsnow/ Work with your art teacher and your computer teacher to learn something about Doble's artistic approach. Prepare a presentation for a specific audience that incorporates these moving images.....the presentation could be about art enhancement, about computer art, about Bentley's and Doble's artistic goals, as an introduction to a scientific presentation on snow crystals, or other approved topic. 5. Wilson Bentley "studied all forms of moisture." How many forms of moisture are there besides snow? Brainstorm them, then collate them with a small group or your class. With that group or class, plan and create a product that explores and relates each of these. One way to develop, research, and present such information, would be as queries. "How can I make a mini-glacier?" "Tell me about the time that two snowflakes were verified as being exactly alike." "Can you explain the different kinds of snowflakes and the variable conditions that produce them, then help me choose and create a virtual snowflake by selecting the right conditions?" "How can I make a snow guage?" Depending on time available, perhaps only snow would be researched.
6. Just as snow is composed of different kinds of crystals, so snowfall and snow on the ground has various aspects. The Inuits have many words in their language to depict snow drifts, snow consistencies, snow on the boughs of trees, sun crust, ripple type drift, and more. Compile a dictionary of such terms, and prepare a clipboard activity with a checklist for younger students that will help their observational and recording skills. Their teacher will help you to keep it on their level. Photograph or video student-discovered examples. Work with the students to prepare a local product about snow in your community. Their roles will depend on the ages of the students. One possible contribution they could make would be to participate in writing and dubbing an informative commentary onto a visual product. One multiage class (first and second) in Orono figured out how many snowflakes there were in the town! 7. Large-scale renditions of 12 of Bentley's snowflake photographs are available for downloading and use at http://www.snowflakebentley.com. With a group, plan an interactive bulletin board or CD-ROM or other product that includes these reproductions. Before you get your plan approved by your teacher and/or librarian, follow the online directions at the above URL to get permission to use these reproductions. As part of your product plan, include something observers can use as a guide to getting permission to download other online materiels for their use. (This will require researching permissions other than snowflake photos. Your librarian can help you with this research.) The following activities were initially published in "Maine Entry", Winter 2000. 8. Bentley worked outside or in a cold shelter and used cold instruments and materials to keep snowflakes in their natural perfection until he could capture that image using microscopic cameras. There are now other ways to capture that natural perfection, some of them deceptively simple. A few are outlined in the following URLs.
(Warning: These include the use of aerosol hairspray, Crystal Clear plastic spray, or artists' fixitive. Appropriate health protection should be implemented.) Work with your group and your art and science and library teachers* to collect real snowflake specimens in a permanent format that can be studied with small, hand-held magnifiers or more sophisticated microscopes. The specimens may turn out to be on slides, on cardboard or paper. Create a set of questions that can be answered by exploring these speciments with microscopes. Test the questions out with students of various ages in order to
After final approval from your science teacher, take your collection to your librarian and help prepare the collection to be based in the school library, including cataloging, processing, providing access and housing and availability of magnification. Invite teachers of your decided age groups to a library lunch meeting, and demonstrate your collection, the equipment, and your sets of questions. Note: Some of your questions could involve snow crystal classification. See Snow Crystal Classification: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/class/class.htm.
9. The annual snowfall in Bentley's Vermont town is "about 120 inche." Find out what the annual snowfall of YOUR town is. Create a chart using the actual inches of both towns. Now make a small chart or graph, perhaps using a computer program, showing the same relationship. Add some means to help a viewer understand both the comparison and the actuality. For instance, if your town's snowfall is 6 1/2 feet, you could put a basketball player next to that part of the chart or graph, because most basketball players are over 6 feet tall. If your town's snowfall is 1 foot, picture a dachshund, who is about 1 foot tall. Or a basketball, which is about a foot in diameter. Display your charts publicly. 10. Willie Bentley was home-schooled by his mother until he was 14. He read an entire set of encyclopedias. How long would it take YOU to read a set of encyclopedias? Create a plan for how you could learn this without reading the entire set. Your plan should include at least three elements:
What else will you need? Check your plan with your teacher/librarian, including how you can test your plan. Now test your plan. Now figure out the answer and conference with your teacher/librarian with your conclusions. 11. One computer artist has taken some of Bentley's landmark snowflake photographs and transformed them into stunning animations that are like crystalline light shows. His name is Rick Doble, and his work may be experienced at http://www.rickdoble.net/newsnow/ . Work with your art teacher and your computer teacher to learn something about Doble's artistic approach. Prepare a presentation for a specific audience that incorporates these moving images.....the presentation could be about art enhancement, about computer art, about Bentley's and Doble's artistic goals, as an introduction to a scientific presentation on snow crystals, or other approved topic. 12. Snowflake Bentley is an unusual biography. It is written simply. Yet it is very informative, both about Wilson Bentley AND about his work. And it uses the technique of sidebars that contain added information. It is also a picture book. The large illustrations give the viewer a sense of where and when Bentley grew up, also the details of the equipment he used and their size. Explore your library's biography section and choose a number of biographies that show a variety of ways biographies are presented. For instance, some use no graphics at all. Where does Snowflake Bentley fit within this group? Choose a very simple picture biography and prepare a written plan of how you could 'beef' it up. Also, do some research to locate some 'beef', and decide what would be the best way to include it. Prepare two pages of your beefed up biography. Choose a very complex biography and prepare a written plan of how you could simplify it without sacrificing its most important elements. Create two pages of your simplified biography. With a small group, select a local or regional person of note, and plan and create a simple yet inviting and informative biography. It need not be in the same format as Snowflake Bentley. The audience, however, must be able to choose to experience your biography on a mix of different levels and/or formats. (Analyzing in detail how Ms. Martin organized her biography could provide helpful clues, even if your format will be a multi-level computer application or a bulletin board with lift-up sections.) 13. Biographies are not the only kind of books that offer more and more choices of how to absorb or perceive or utilize their content. Some "You Are There" fiction books make a 'bank' of historical data available to readers to help them with required decisions. (Similar data banks are available in many computerized simulations, such as "Oregon Trail".) Some information books provide extensive, detailed illustrations, expanded by short verbal details, expanded further by more technical details in a smaller font. For example, the layout of Knopf's "Eyewitness" books do not function in a linear manner, but as inviting, optional "layers." Usborne publishers add fictional scenarios to enhance similar factual presentations, sometimes in comic strip format. Some books present prehistoric evidence, such as Leakey's trail of two pair of footprints, or a necklace of blue beads, then hypothesize events that might have caused or resulted from that evidence. Some computer programs, CDROMS, and many web sites provide similar optional examples, explanations, additions, contrasts, what-ifs. As a classroom or grade, collect quality examples of print and non-print presentations that make a variety of informational choices available to the user. (This collection may be compiled in part or whole by teacher/librarian.) Annotate the variations, including strengths and weaknesses and their potential. Groups, classrooms, grades may then explore the many ways available to portray the scope of a required, assigned content. Any product chosen for that portrayal must achieve pre-determined goals for that content as well as product criteria. Groups of students will develop diverse products, both print and non-print, on the same content or aspects of the same content. The results will be utilized as content resources. The results will be assessed by students and staff as to their validity, effectiveness, and appeal. 14. Many poets have written snow poems, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They feel differently about snow, as the "secret of despair" or "tumultuous privacy of storm" or "frolic architecture." Explore snow poetry and collect five of your favorites. Create your own personal snow poetry book, and add two snow poems of your own. Include several empty pages to add your own poetry or future snow poems you discover. 15. William Wergin has written an article about U. S. postage stamps that depict snow. http://www.lpsi.barc.usda.gov/emusnow/ww/\doc\254.txt Read his article, and explore his Scott list of stamps with snow. Do you agree with his criticisms? Now that many children across our nation will read the Caldecott Medal winner Snowflake Bentley, it might be time for a series of "snow" stamps. Research how federal stamp designs are chosen, including names, agencies, and addresses. You might explore how the lobster motif on Maine license plates was accomplished by students. What avenues are available for you to try to achieve your goal? Study the stamp series now available for purchase at your post office, Wergin's snow stamps, and examples available in your library. Compile a list of what appears to be the criteria used to design or select current stamp series. Use these to help guide the development of a series of "snow" stamps. You could even have a contest and select several series. (Students working on some of the other activities above could contribute ideas or even prototypes.) If your federal efforts are unsuccessful, what other uses could you imagine for using these new stamp designs? URLs: Match the Flakes: Test you memory skill AND your recognition of snowflake types: http://snowflakebentley.com/match.htm The page requires the FLASH plugin. It will prompt you to download the plugin if you do not have the player installed. A Wilson Bentley home page: http://www.snowflakebentley.com A sub-page contains the Wilson Bentley Digital Archives Newletters: http://snowflakebentley.com/news.htm A list of some interesting websites about Wilson Bentley, including an opportunity for students to send in their comments about Snowflake Bentley and get them posted. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1090/snowflak.html Comparative images of snow crystals photographed by Bentley and others with electron micrographs of similar snow crystals. Reveals 3D nature of these crystals: http://www..llpsi.barc.usda.gov.emusnow/comp/comp1.htm Classical light microscopic snowflake images published by Nakaya in northern Japan: http://radar.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/crystal/11.JPG About Maine author Jacqueline Briggs Martin. Includes information about author visits and a bibliography: http://www.jacquelinebriggsmartin.com/ About Maine author Jacqueline Briggs Martin: http://www.cbcbooks.org/columns/meet.htm
BibliographyBentley, Wilson A. & Humphreys, W. J. Snow Crystals. Dover Publications, 1962. Republication of original 1931 thousands of Bentley's photographs. Wick, Walter. A Drop of Water. Scholastic Press, 1997. Contains a remarkable section on snowflakes with superb photographs. A list of articles about Wilson A. Bentley: http://www.snowflakebentley.com/articles.htm including 3 of the 60 articles he himself wrote. 8. Explore fairy tales or folklore that are snow-oriented. Choose a snow tale that has more than one version. Enter them in an interactive product. Select one or more parts of the story that would be interesting for other students to modify or change radically. The ending will probably be one. Provide access to your product, encouragement for students to imagine such changes, and instructions as to how thay can contribute their variations. (Care must be taken to arrange "saving" and protecting each component of the product from damage or loss.) This is a good opportunity for students to experience a district wide or school-wide LAN system. 9. Bentley sold some of his glass snowflake plates to the world class company Tiffany for jewelry designs. (Bowling, Sue Ann. "The Man Who Made Portraits of Snowflakes Article #841", Alaska Science Forum, 1987.) Plan a research activity about the commercial use of snowflake design that includes a useful product. Discuss and revise your written ideas with your teacher and librarian, then implement your project.
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