Are all snowflakes really different???

Answer 1

I suppose you'd have to check a few quadrillion snowflakes to confirm this. And, if you did find two identical snowflakes, the frickin' things would melt before you could get it confirmed, so no one would believe you. It's definitely a no win proposition.

Answer 2

Pretty much, after all no human being is EXACTLY the same...yet. No one has actually proven differently. Although, there are a few classifications of BASIC types. Here is an exerpt from one of my favorite websites. "How does one classify snowflakes? It's not so easy, because how you divide the different types is somewhat a matter of taste. There is a good analogy with breeds of dogs. The definition of different breeds is decided upon by a committee of people, and really one can make up as many breeds as one wants. And no matter how many different breeds you define, some dogs will be mixed, not belonging to any one breed.
Snowflakes do come in different types, and you need to give them names if you want to talk about them. But there will never be a precise way to define the different types. I prefer the 35 types shown at the top of this page, but others have come up with alternate classifications schemes. Some of these are shown below."

Answer 3

yes
A snowflake is an aggregate of ice crystals that forms while falling in and below a cloud. They are typically hexagonally symmetrical.


Snow crystal
Geometry
A snowflake always has six symmetric arms (along three symmetric axes), which arises from the hexagonal crystal structure of ordinary ice (known as ice Ih) along its 'basal' plane.

There are, broadly, two possible explanations for the symmetry of snowflakes. Firstly, there could be communication or information transfer between the arms, such that growth in each arm affects the growth in each other arm. Surface tension or phonons are among the ways that such communication could occur.


Photomicrograph images of snow flakes by Vermont scientist-artist Wilson Bentley, c. 1902The other explanation, which appears to be the prevalent view, is that the arms of a snowflake grow independently in an environment that is believed to be rapidly varying in temperature, humidity and other atmospheric conditions. This environment is believed to be relatively spatially homogeneous on the scale of a single flake, leading to the arms growing to a high level of visual similarity by responding in identical ways to identical conditions, much in the same way that unrelated trees respond to environmental changes by growing near-identical sets of tree rings. The difference in the environment in scales larger than a snowflake leads to the observed lack of correlation between the shapes of different snowflakes.

Answer 4

How can they possibly know there are no two snowflakes a like??
After all, there are even identical twins!

Answer 5

Well they're different like every person is different. You could probably come across two people who look the same, but look real close and you'll find that they're still different. Actually, no two of anything is the same, just because one might have an extra atom or something.

Answer 6

I'd hate to have to collect snowflakes to research that question.

I suppose, because there are differences in temperature or atmospheric conditions, it is likely that they are different.

But, who really knows?

kiwi

Answer 7

its based on opinion
do you think all snowflakes are different?

Answer 8

on some level, yes

You may have to go to Quantum States and electron charges to find the difference, but yes they are all different.

Answer 9

Yes but there are very slight differences in some although we can't see.

Answer 10

As though humans are each individually different.