Snowflake Bentley

Students learned about the “Snowflake Man” Wilson Bentley. A self educated farmer, Bentley attracted world attention with his groundbreaking work in the area of photography, most notably his extensive work with snow crystals (commonly known as snowflakes). By adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, and years of trial and error, he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal in 1885.

For this lesson we discussed radial symmetry; symmetry of an object around a center axis or point. Each student drew unique snowflakes. Each line became one point of the snowflake. Students then decorated their snowflakes with shapes and lines. The only rule was that it had to show radial symmetry.

Students then outlined their snowflakes in Sharpie, and used a wet on wet watercolor painting technique to paint the background.