If every snow flake is supposed to be different - How do you know?

Question

It's not exactly anything you can prove

Answer 1

I would assume for the fact that a snow flake contains billions of atoms. The probability of two flakes having the same arrangement at the atomic level will be almost nil.

This is not just esotherical. How atoms and molecules get arranged will determine the way water molecules crystalize into flakes when frozen. Some flakes will have a similar, general pattern, but for all practical purposes, they will be different, even in the most minuscule of details.

Answer 2

Frozen crystals of all shapes and sizes float down and accumulate. The white fields resemble diamonds glittering in the sun. Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley took over 6,000 photographs of individual flakes between the early 1880’s and his death in 1931. No two were alike.

Some snowflakes resemble Dorian columns; some look like oak leaves; some are shaped like dinner plates; and thousands are almost perfectly symmetrical six-armed intricate snowflakes that look like frozen lace.

Scientists believe dust and bacteria blown off plants and thrown into the air by ocean waves produce rain and snow. In a lab, Russell Schnell (U of CO) produced snowflakes by injecting bacteria into a cloud chamber. The experimental clouds immediately turned into snow. The bacteria, Pseudomonas syringae and Erwinia herbicola, contain a molecule that attracts water. After one ice crystal forms, it splinters. Each fragment serves as a seed for another ice crystal. The snowflake’s six-sided shape comes from the hexagonal lattice structure of an ice molecule.

Ice crystals are extremely sensitive to a variety of conditions, including temperature, air currents, and humidity. A crystal needs atmospheric conditions of 5° F. to grow. These six-sided hexagonal crystals are shaped in the high clouds; needle or flat six-sided crystals are shaped in the middle height clouds; and a wide variety of six-sided shapes are formed in the low clouds. The colder the temperature, the ice crystal tips are sharper. At warmer temperatures, the ice crystals grow slower and smoother, resulting in less intricate shapes. The growing branch-like protrusions are called dendrites. Differences in the macroclimate on each side of the ice crystal produces the asymmetrical shapes

Answer 3

That's a good question, and it is one that I've been thinking of for years now.

When you consider the trillions upon trillions of snowflakes that fall every year on this Earth, how can you say no two are identical? You cannot prove this either way as you couldn't even check just the ones that fall in your own yard, let alone around the world.

And how many snowflakes fall each year on the Earth? Trillions? Quadrillions? Quintillions? It is an enormous number!

Answer 4

Next time it snows where you are...sit outside with a magnifying glass. Put both hands out; the first snow flake you feel on each hand, look at them with your magnifying glass and then report back to us!

Answer 5

President Bush exercised the first veto of his presidency on Wednesday, turning down a bill that would have increased the scope of human embryonic stem-cell research. Several dozen "Snowflake" babies—born from frozen embryos that had been donated rather than destroyed—were on hand to help celebrate the announcement. The Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program took its name "because embryos are unique and fragile." Is each snowflake that falls from the sky really unique?


http://www.slate.com/id/2146238/
http://www.papersnowflakes.com/difftype.htm

Answer 6

What a beautiful question.

The universe is not real-valued, its floating point. The planck distance, time, etc... are believed to be pixels of distance, or time.

The number of atoms in the universe is finite, the number of positions is finite, therefore the number of configurations of the universe, although large is finite.

The number of atoms of water required to make up a snowflake is finite, the number of positions is finite, so the number of possible snowflakes, though large, is finite.

The question isnt CAN they be identical, it is what is the PROBABILITY they are identical.

The number of possible combinations to make a snowflake is the factorial of the number of atoms used. After a few atoms the number of combinations quickly exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. The probability of observing such a co-occurence goes rather quickly to zero. Its not exactly zero, but its on the order of 10^-80 or more.

Answer 7

I'd imagine that a research scientist somewhere made a comprehensive study of this and examined a random sample of snowflakes. Thinking about it, wouldn't one melt before it ended up even near an observation slide? Doh!!!

Answer 8

Its the same way you know when a tree falls in the woods.

Answer 9

Snowflake Bently. He was from Vermont and spent his whole life examining Snowflakes.

Answer 10

I have carefully preserved millions of snowflakes and put them in my freezer for further study.

See?

HEY! WHO TURNED OFF MY FREEZER?

*sob*