SNOW MADE FROM POTATOES

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SNOW MADE FROM POTATOES
12 December 2002 - Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.

Films set in snow-laden winter landscapes cannot always be produced in the dead of winter. Until now, expensive artificial snow had to be imported from Hollywood to obtain the desired effects. In addition, it is always a laborious task to remove the splendid white chips made from polyethylene film after the shooting is over, almost unavoidable that some of the non-biodegradable plastic snow would remain.

"With these types of artificial snow, some always ended up being blown around the set," remarks Frithjof Bauman from the department of Materials Research and Development at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT near Karlsruhe.

The scientists offer an elegant and biodegradable artificial snow alternative made from potato- or cornstarch. The deceptively realistic product does not need to be swept up or vacuumed carefully. A lasting rain shower dissolves the residues instead. The flakes of starch are also suitable for use in shop window dressing. The window dresser only needs to ensure that the objects are slightly moist before sprinkling them with the potato snow. Thanks to the snow's adhesive properties, it's even possible to build snowmen or form your own icicles. Add more water, and the flakes dissolve.

In another case, the ICT had previously developed low-cost artificial snow out of polyethylene foam for the State Theater of Baden in Karlsruhe. The theater urgently required new artificial snow for a performance, but the existing supplier in Hollywood failed to deliver. The institute researchers came to the rescue and developed an alternative within only three weeks. "In this case, it depended less on whether each chip looked like a real snowflake and more on how the flakes behaved when falling to the ground," reports Baumann. So that the snow looked authentic when trickling down, the researchers also recorded the amount of time that a flake needed to reach the ground. Besides having the right dimensions, density and distribution of size, it was important that the material should be non-flammable. Andreas Kosian, technical director for the principal stage at the State Theater, is a happy customer: "This artificial snow is ideal for our purposes."

The white product can claim its most prestigious role to date with the filming of the pilot film for the science fiction series "Ice Planet". For its production, members of the institute loaded a truck with five metric tons of the starch- and polyethylene-based flakes

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About: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft undertakes applied research of direct utility to private and public enterprise and of wide benefit to society. Its services are solicited by customers and contractual partners in industry, the service sector and public administration. The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains over 80 research units at more than 40 different locations throughout Germany. A staff of some 12,700, predominantly qualified scientists and engineers, works with an annual research budget of over one billion euros. Of this sum, more than € 900 million is generated through contract research. Two thirds of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s contract research revenue is derived from contracts with industry and from publicly financed research projects. The remaining one third is contributed by the German federal and Länder governments, as a means of enabling the institutes to pursue more fundamental research in areas that are likely to become relevant to industry and society in five or ten years’ time.

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