Fantastic Mr Frost: How an icy night turned a car bonnet into a work of art

By MICHAEL HANLON

Last updated at 21:27 22 January 2008


Sometimes nature's palette is richer than that of any artist, as these beautiful and surreal images show.

These delicate fronds and whorls are not decorative etchings, nor have they

anything to do with vegetation, despite their biological appearance.

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In fact they are nothing more than frozen water — ice crystals which formed

on Mail reader Stuart Dent's cars on two frosty nights earlier this month outside his home in Oxfordshire.

The beautiful patterns, called "fern frost", reflect myriad water molecules

arranged in six-sided patterns, a deep symmetry governed by the geometry of

the molecule itself.

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But the human eye sees fronds and bracken, a nest of vipers or a bowl of

wriggling eels — endlessly repeating strings of tiny ice spicules.

"It was late at night and I thought I could see something on the roof of my Rover, so I went over to investigate and saw these unbelievable patterns," Mr Dent says.

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"There was no frost on the grass, or the paving stones. It didn't even feel that cold. Then the same thing happened the following weekend — I couldn't believe it."

Because metal is such a good conductor of heat, the car bodywork would have

been the first surface to drop below freezing as temperatures fell.

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Like a windowpane, the paintwork encourages the growth of long ice crystals,

each interlocking with the last, with the overall pattern being dictated by tiny

scratches, dust and other imperfections on the surface.

Beautiful though it is, this is nature at her most ephemeral — artwork that

disappears shortly after the first rays of sun strike in the morning.

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