The Environmental Chemical Sciences Program in the Chemistry Division at the National Science Foundation supports the research of Professor Steven Neshyba at the University of Puget Sound. The research project supports laboratory and theoretical studies into the surface morphology of rough crystalline ice. It is known that when ice crystals in atmospheric clouds (such as cirrus clouds) develop rough surfaces, the clouds tend to reflect more light. Critical details about this roughening remain elusive. This Research in an Undergraduate Institution (RUI) award will grow ice crystals inside a variable pressure scanning electron microscope, which will allow characterization of surface morphology at a resolution not possible using light microscopy. These investigations will assess the response of roughening to variations in temperature, vapor supersaturation, and impurities at the ice-vapor interface, and will provide the basis for modeling the shortwave scattering properties of such crystals. In terms of theory, an integrated molecular dynamics and reaction-diffusion approach to simulating the dynamics of viscinal ice-vapor interfaces will be developed. These simulation results will be used to test hypotheses about the mechanism of formation, morphological properties, and light-scattering consequences, of rough ice.
Undergraduates at the University of Puget Sound, as well as science teachers from Sammamish High School, will be engaged in the research as co-investigators and co-authors of scientific publications, and through collaboration with researchers at the Institute for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. High school teachers will be funded to do research in Dr. Neshyba's laboratory. This will help them to develop problem-based learning modules in their classrooms.
