Abstract
Ice particles are captured, photographed, melted, and then photographed again. Mass is estimated from the size of the melted drop. Based on a sample of 640 particles, the standard error in estimating particle mass solely from the maximum dimension of the particle is found to be a factor of 4. The standard error in estimating mass concentration M in a cloud from a sample of n well-characterized particles recorded by an optical array probe is estimated to be approximately a factor of 100.6/n^1/2.
