The organizers of the Breckenridge snow sculpture championships in Colorado must be getting used to having a mathematical element in their annual competition.
For the second year in a row, a team assembled by mathematician Stan Wagon of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., participated in the international event. In its debut effort last year, the team carved a huge block of packed snow into a spectacular version of a minimal geometric structure known as the Costa surface (see Minimal Snow , March 6, 1999: https://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/3_6_99/mathland.htm). This year, a new team created an award-winning snow sculpture out of a mathematical form called Enneper’s surface.