Edit : thanks for the great discussion. A fundamental flaw in my question is that since I was pretty high and watching something narrated by David Attenborough I mistakenly applied his facts to our collective knowledge “facts”.
Thanks to those that caught this and made me realize that “no two snowflakes are exactly alike” is completely unscientific. No two anythings are EXACTLY alike. That’s why there are two of them.
I say we push to amend that statement to “no two snowflakes, that we have examined, have, to the human eye, the same distinguishing features of shape that we would consider them identical in regards to only that particular trait.”
I feel like that is a bit too dry for buzzfeed. But we can always hope.
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The snowflake is formed one molecule at a time. Once an initial microscopic shape has formed, it is easiest for new molecules to attach in a symmetric pattern that is based off of the initial random “seed” structure.
Also, each branch will have small differences caused by local changes in the environment as the snowflake forms.
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