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Snowflakes:

All crystals are amazing structures. The shape of the crystal gives us a macro-sized glimpse of the forces at work in the atoms or molecules that make it up. In the case of water, the molecular forces give the crystal a basic hexagonal shape.

From this hexagonal starting block, it’s fairly easy to imagine how, given tiny variations in starting conditions, temperature, humidity etc, the crystals - snowflakes specifically - could grow in random ways so that, as the saying goes, no two are alike.

Given that there’s a lot of random branching going on at the growing tips of the flake’s ‘arms’, how is it that all the six ‘arms’ are more or less identical? In other words, if there’s no random branching, all flakes would be the same. If there is random branching, each of the flake’s arms would be different.

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For a wonderfully informative guide to snowflakes with many exceptional photos, visit : SnowCrystals.com

Paul H. posts the following link and ideas . . .

" Here is a link to a movie of a snowflake growing in a laboratory.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic

They are suggesting that if you fix the temperature and the humidity
exactly in a lab then you would always grow a "very similar" snowflake.

That if you grew 10 snowflakes in a lab in the same conditions then they would all grow at almost the same speed and produce almost identical structures in every branch every time! They say that no-one can predict or explain the structure from basic physics because it is so complicated and not completely understood. But minute variations in humidity and temperature can produce a large number of basic SnowFlake patterns.

In a cloud each snowflake is blown around and experiences a unique
history of temperature and humidity and so no 2 snowflakes are alike.
However each of the 6 arms of the snowflake experience almost an
identical path of humidity and temperature and so grow almost completely similar arms."

Martin G again . . .

There is another theory that there is some kind of molecular resonance going on. In other words, the molecules are all vibrating away as normal, and this sets up a physical, or possibly electrical, resonance in the entire flake. Because it's so small, the vibrations somehow affect the way the crystals growth at the six tips. Seems pretty plausible to me.

any comments ?