Ice Crystal Patterns on My Home Window

Today I was amazed by seeing the little funny crystals on the window of my home. The following picture show them.

From Guage Invariance Photoblog

What are these crystals?

My window has double pans, the outer one touches a freezing temperature and the inner one a comfortable high temperature of +25 Celsius. My living room heaters are right underneath that window, therefore the transmission of hot air around the window is high. Moist cools to water and gradually into ice on the outer glass.

When the outside temperature falls gradually, the water molecules have enough time to cool down less disorderedly and form a crystal. The water crystals are frosted based on the glass surface conditions. In fact, when a piece of glass is polished at the time it was made in the glass factory, or when we scrub its surfaceby soap or glass cleaners some hidden patterns are left on it. These patterns play an important role of being the main base to nucleate the way these frost crystals condensate and grow on the window.

The main question is where these symmetric flower patterns come from? To learn it, see here.

Below there are some more photo of my window:

From Guage Invariance Photoblog

From Guage Invariance Photoblog

From Guage Invariance Photoblog

From Guage Invariance Photoblog