The program on this page animates spherical snowflakes. When the rps setting is nonzero, each fractal describes a circle along the surface of its parent sphere at the rate of rps revolutions per second. The rotateColors checkbox slowly shifts the hue of each level set.

Snowballs are dancing

Each fractal is associated with a fixed but random axis through its parent sphere around which it revolves. The circle described by a fractal’s path can be as large as a great circle of the parent sphere or as small as a single point at which it rotates in place, although these circles tend to be larger, of radius closer to the parent sphere’s radius . For example, half the fractals are expected to describe a circle of radius in the range ; for 90% of the fractals, this range is Since the rate at which a fractal moves is proportional to the radius of its circular path, fractals describing larger circles move faster than those describing smaller circles.