When Liquid Becomes LatticeSamantha TaylorAward: Top 100
School: sleepy hollow high school Recently, on the way to take the March SAT at 7:30 AM, I saw ice climbing up my car's windshield after spraying it with windshield wiper fluid. I forced my mom to pull over so I could capture it. This occurred during a weird Arctic spell when temperatures dropped to 17°F. Since the interior of the car was warm, heat was transferred via conduction through the glass to the exterior. The windshield's heat radiated into the cold air faster than the air could replace it, so the glass surface temperature dropped below freezing. The windshield fluid lost energy to the cold window and air, undergoing a phase change from liquid to solid ice crystals. Since wiper fluid freezes at a lower temperature than water, this would not have occurred during a regular winter. The crystal-like shape of the frost formed when the wiper fluid froze on my windshield, which contained imperfections like scratches or dirt residue. The residue helped nucleate the ice, a process where water molecules arranged themselves into hexagonal lattice structures to create ice nuclei. These impurities facilitated the growth of fractal, leaf-like patterns in the ice. The sun in the top right corner revealed diffuse transmission of light through a rough surface. Light rays from the sun traveled through different materials (air, ice, and glass), and changed speed when refracting and reflecting. Once the light struck the surface of the fractal ice, it scattered in different directions, causing a blurry image on the other side. 
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