"Snows! Snows! From the sky, the feathered flakes, how quickly they fly. Like little birds that don't know why, they chase each other from one place to another, without the other being able to track them. Snows! Snows! A joyful spectacle is upon us on this heavy day! However, behind the seemingly chaotic nature of snowfall, so beautifully captured by American poet Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), lies a surprising symmetry.
The German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) reflected on this with childlike curiosity when it began to snow while crossing the Charles Bridge in Prague in 1610. This experience prompted him to write the first scientific treatise on snow crystals, Strena Seu De . Nive Sexangula , in which he asks why when snowflakes fall, although each one is different from the last, they always have a hexagonal shape. A simple enough question, but one that no one had asked before and which was not answered for three hundred years. However, in attempting to answer it, Kepler provided some fascinating insights about snowflakes and asked some pertinent questions about physics, mathematics, and biology.
The life of a snowflake may seem inconsequential, but Snow Secrets makes it something transcendental. The obverse of the coin features an enlarged snow crystal with an ice blue gemstone in the center and polished edges. The reverse of the coin shows a young woman in profile. A manifestation of winter, she is a snow princess adorned with a crown and cape, both decorated with snow crystals. The caseback is partially polished around its crown and at the bottom right.
