On the Positive Electrification of Snow Crystals in the Process of Their Melting (III)

[摘要] From the experimental and observational results to date (Magono and Kikuchi, 1963, 1965), it has been known that snow crystals and ice specimens acquire some positive charge during their melting process. As it is thought that air bubbles which contained in snow crystals and ice specimens have some role to the mechanism of charge generation in their melting process, especially in this paper, the relationship between air bubble concentration in ice specimen and positive charge generation in the specimen during the process was confirmed experimentally. As a result, it was found that the positive charge acquired in the melting process was approximately proportional to the air bubble concentration contained in the ice specimen, and it was noted that the charge depended not only on the total volume of air bubbles in the specimen but also on the size of each bubble. In this experiment, the diameters which contribute to the mechanism of this charge generation ranged from several μ to 150μ with the mean volume diameter of 52μ. And big air bubbles which the equivalent volume diameter is larger than 1 mm did not contribute to the mechanism. Accordingly, it was noted that a great number of small air bubbles are important in the charge generation in the melting process.

[学科分类] 大气科学