frost catching

A bit of weather that allowed for some frost catching of late (right up until it snowed last night).

I set up a single ‘cell’ (L) with pieces from the portable 003 frost catcher (R) and got mild results over a couple nights.

Then with these conditions in the evening (28Dec2009)

and these the next morning (29Dec2009)

I found that I had some decent results:

I had also been looking again at the cars out front that were accumulating frost and I tried a couple ‘impromptu’ catchers, attempting to create an airspace and heat-sink that might mimic some of what was going on with the autos (I tried something like this last winter as well, with mixed results).

These were the three pieces:
the small tin was empty, leaving just a small airspace,
the plastic box contained two stones and a hunk of metal,
and a small piece of basalt paver sat in the larger metal box.

Compared to the ‘portable 003′ cell across the yard, these looked to have done a better job.

The small tin seemed to have no frost whatsoever while the larger metal box had some nice patterns on the lid.

The star was the plastic box. This was not airtight but it seemed that the temperature difference between the inside and the outside, the warmer air trapped against the lid, made for some nice frost crystals.

It’s now 36 degrees, a bit of rain here and there, the snow is melting and we’re mostly out of decent frost-producing weather.
I’m setting aside a few plastic items for future materials testing.