How a snowflake gets its shape

Snow can be soft and fluffy or stinging and icy; perfect for skiing or prone to melt. The difference lies in the shape of the flakes. They don’t all look like the kind you see in emoji. Researchers have classified as many as 108 types, but according to Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, you can pare them down to four broad categories: plates, columns, needles, and dendrites.



By re-creating snowflakes in a lab, Libbrecht and other scientists found that the keys to getting one shape instead of another are temperature and humidity. Snow crystals form when the humidity is so high that the air can no longer hold water. Then vapor condenses into droplets, which begin to freeze. Higher humidity lets the crystals take on more complex shapes—when the air is drier, snowflakes grow more slowly and take on simpler forms.

READ MORE AT: https://www.popsci.com/different-snowflake-shapes

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