When Dale Anderson first saw his prize-winning image, he thought he'd messed
up.

"I thought it was a mistake," said Anderson, an MS student in materials science and engineering. "But then I increased the size of the field, and I saw the snowflake." View image

What Anderson, then an undergraduate, had really seen was a crystal of lead just a few microns across. As part of his senior design project, he had been examining a substrate though MTUís single-beam atomic force microscope. A minute quantity of lead had contaminated the edge of the silicon disc, creating an elaborate crystalline network.

"I ran off and grabbed as many people as I could to look at the snowflakes," he said. "A friend said I should enter the contest."

So he did, entering the image in the third annual Microscopy Images Competition: Images in the Material World. It took first place in the Most Artistic Image category.

Sponsored by the Materials Research Society's Student Chapter at Cornell University, the competition is open to all North American undergraduates. Along with the other top finishers, Anderson received a digital camera donated by Eastman Kodak, which he gave to his department.

Because of their dazzling colors--blue, orange, green and yellow--Anderson's lead snowflakes might have had an advantage over the black-and-white entries. This is not unfair artistic license, he points out. At this scale, colors, including black, white and gray, are a mystery, because the images can't be captured in the visual spectrum.

"The colors show only the depth in this case," Anderson said. "I chose the palate, but Nature painted the picture."

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Michigan Tech Department of Materials Science and Engineering