Larger snowflakes have bigger crystals with more recognisably unique features, but some smaller ones can look the same. However, on a molecular scale, no snow crystals are the same, as they are made up of billions of water molecules, which determine their shape and make them all unique.
Snowflakes, or more accurately snow crystals, form and grow when water vapour sublimes (condenses directly into ice without going through a liquid phase). The most common shape of snow crystal is a hexagonal prism, which consists of six prism faces and two basal faces. As the crystal grows, more water molecules bond to the prism sides, giving us the six-sided snowflakes we are familiar with, with shapes such as stellar dendrites and stellar plates (Figure 1).
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