Walking through mountains in northern Portugal I noticed a curious formation of ice cristals whose explanation I was unable to give to my grand children (Photo 1). I searched in the internet but I couldn't find it. On the soil, in the areas covered with raw sand, resultant of erosion of granit, the grains of sand were raised up by long ice cristals (photo 2). With the weihgt of the sand grains the "prismatic" cristals of ice curved (photo 3) Why cristals elongate this way, raising the grains of sand? Why they do it as separate columns of ice? I would be very glad to obtain an explanation Thank you very much PS I couldn´t send the images

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    $\begingroup$ Too bad there are no photos. $\endgroup$ – Ivan Neretin Jan 2 at 10:36
  • $\begingroup$ The photos are missing but I suspect it is related to this physics.stackexchange.com/questions/70974/… Look also at the comment of mine at the very bottom of the thread. It should be the same with just sand on top. $\endgroup$ – Alchimista Jan 2 at 10:42

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