How does a snowflake get its six-sided shape?
Snowflake's Secret Rule
How does a snowflake get its six-sided shape?
Catch a snowflake on your sleeve and look closely. Six points. Six sides. Always six — never five, never seven. It's as if every snowflake agreed on the same secret rule before falling. So who handed out the rulebook?
The rulebook is water itself. A snowflake is just frozen water, and to understand the six, we have to zoom way, way in — down to the tiny building blocks called water molecules. Each one is a little three-piece unit: one oxygen and two hydrogens, shaped a bit like a wide-open pair of mouse ears.
