Order From ChaosNathan BerndtAward: Top 100
School: british international school of washington At around -10°C, the soft, fuzzy surfaces of the Velcro on my ski jacket become a stage for something that usually goes unnoticed. Snowflakes gently fall onto the soft, fluffy loops and stay in shape for just long enough to barely make out their intricate structures by eye. There is no single moment where a snowflake is "made"; it develops continuously as it falls. It forms when water freezes onto a tiny nucleus. The water molecules form a hexagonal lattice, which leaves us with the sixfold symmetry that we are all familiar with. From there the growth depends completely on the surrounding conditions. Even the slightest changes in temperature or humidity lead to changes in how quickly the edges develop. The tips that extend further into the cold winter air are able to collect more vapour and grow faster, so small, seemingly insignificant, differences are amplified greatly into the branching structures visible. At the point where the snowflakes touch the Velcro, two very different surfaces meet. The Velcro is designed and engineered to be chaotic and irregular, aiming to be functional rather than beautiful. The snowflakes, in contrast, are formed only by fundamental physics, with no human intervention, yet they manage to achieve a delicacy and level of detail that would be virtually impossible to replicate accurately in a factory. For a brief moment, these two meet, one messy, shaped deliberately for function, the other neat, formed only by nature. 
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