Randomly moving water molecules in the gas phase condense at
sufficiently low temperature to form a snowflake.
Zillions of
these
fall on
Kalamazoo, MI every winter. We understand that this growth of
structure
and beauty
are the result of the interaction of the electric fields within a
system minimizing its potential energy.
Go
here
for the whole story (with scads of wonderfully beautiful pictures of
snowflakes).
Gif animation of time-lapse images by Vicky Tanusheva and physicist Dr.
Kenneth Libbrecht.
The
interaction of force (and quantum) fields within a system minimizing
its potential
energy,
often accompanied by spontaneous phase transitions, produces the
observed
structure and complexity within our universe, from atoms to clusters of
galaxies.
