snowflakes?

Question

ok so you've heard the saying every snowflake is different right? how do you know that? was it really proven or is it just a saying? how would you prove something like that?

Answer 1

The previous answers are correct in that it would be very difficult to prove that no two snow flakes are ever alike. Snow flakes do have similar shapes due to the molecular structure of the H2O molecule and, based on the physics of how H2O molecules nucleate and grow in a cloud, it is quite understandable that many snow flakes will look very very similar. Even a single small snow flake contains billions of billions of water molecules (18 grams of snow flakes contain Avagadro's number of molecules), so even for snow flakes that weigh exactly the same, there are many different ways those molecules can be arranged. On the other hand, a single snow storm produces a lot of individual flakes. If you think about the incredible number of individual snow flakes that have ever formed in all the snow storms that have ever occurred, it starts to seem possible that there could have been two that were indentical.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, you can't look at every individual snowflake forever and be like "Hey look! We still don't have 2 that are the same!"
I can only imagine that knowing that every snowflake is different comes from a combination of 2 things:
1) There is probably a scientific property that comes from someone studying clouds, and water particles that doesn't allow snowflakes to form the same.
2) That there was a study done on a random sampling of snow flakes that was able to prove that no 2 snow flakes are ever, or will ever be, the same.

Answer 3

There was a show on TV about a week about this. There was a guy that examined snow under a microscope. Each flake was different. Each snowflake has six "arms". This is due to the makeup of water molecules. But the details were different.

Answer 4

You could never actually prove that each snowflake is unique (since you'd have to physically go out and look at all of them), but the possibilities of the way a snowflake can grow are so enormous that it's incredibly unlikely that you'd ever find 2 that were exactly alike. The "proof" of snowflakes being unique is all mathematical.