How to Bake Fractal Snowflake Cupcakes

Fractal Snowflake Cupcake, Copyright © Windell Oskay, used with permission from Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license

The Koch Snowflake is a neat fractal shape that you can also make in your kitchen.  This project makes iterated fractals out of edible dough: marzipan and rolled fondant.  Neither dough is particularly easy to work with in this level of detail, but the result may well be worth the effort.  Koch Cupcakes are the ultimate in geek chow.

While the Koch Snowflake is a beautiful shape, it’s not necessarily obvious how to construct it physically.  The first thing to notice is that the fractal consists of three identical Koch curves placed around a triangular core.  This provides a simplification: we can first make the Koch curve by iteration, and then cut it into thirds and place it around the core.

Fractal Snowflake Cupcakes

Big Bone Lick Snowstorm

Here are some original photographs after a massive snowstorm at Big Bone Lick State Park in March 2008.

Park covered in snow

The park was covered with about a foot of snow, which is a lot for Northern Kentucky.

 

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Long Island Snow Storm Time-Lapse

Time-lapse video shows the storm’s progress from midnight EST to 10:30 am EST in Long Island, New York.  When the video starts, there are already several inches of snow on the ground.  By the following morning, there was more than a foot of snow.