Kepler's Snowflake

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Six Cornered Snowflake, a booklet written by Johannes Kepler as a New Year's gift, sought to explain the intricate and symmetrical shape of winter's tiny stars of snow. His insightful speculations about minerals and geometry were the beginning of the modern understanding of crystals. Philip Ball tells the story of how Kepler became a key figure in the scientific revolution of the 17th Century. He was a precocious mathematician who became an adviser to Emperor Rudolf II in 1600. Although he contributed to the idea that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the solar system, his role at the court was to be an astrologer. Philip brings the story of the shape of the snowflakes up to date. It was only 20 years ago with the development of the maths of fractals that we got to understand the formation of the myriad patterns of snowflakes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're
0:24.7	doing the wrong thing.
0:25.9	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.
0:32.3	I'm Philip Ball, and in discovery from the BBC I'm telling the story of
0:36.9	Johannes Kepler and his attempts to explain the myriad patterns of snowflakes.
0:46.5	In Prague a man is making his way through the winter's cold over the Charles Bridge as the year of 1610 draws to a close.
0:57.4	High on the hill before him looms the grand castle of his boss the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf the second. It begins to snow again, flakes settle on the man's coat and he
1:05.8	pulls it tighter around him. Then his frown gives way to a look of elation.
1:11.1	These tiny stars of snow have given him the answer to his problem.
1:17.6	He hurries home and sets to work on a little book.
1:22.8	The man is Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer who the Emperor Rudolf has appointed as court
1:28.0	mathematician.
1:29.7	His book is to be a New Year's present, but not to Rudolph. The Emperor was often lax about paying
1:36.0	Kepler's wages, and anyway, a man of common birth making his way in the intellectual world
	...

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