Do you believe that no two snowflakes are alike?

I’m checking.

This could take awhile…

I have to keep them in the freezer on individual wax paper leaflets. I can only store about 20 at a time. I have not found any two alike. Their hexagonal, crystal form is beautiful. Nothing is as magical as the wonder of snow,.

I don’t see how any two could possibly be exactly the same since they form randomly.

Not totally random—there are laws of physics involved—amount of water, barometric pressure, temperatures, variations of all the above as they fall—if conditions were exactly the same, though extremely rare, there could be many that are close to exactly alike.

Given the millions of snowflakes that have fallen, there must be at least two that, to the naked eye, are identical.

Only in a parallel universe.

”Not liberals, conservatives, spoiled kids, annoying customers, or any other person. Just flakes of snow.”

How sad that we need this disclaimer.

I think it’s rare, but I do think there are likely some identical snowflakes in the world.

@cookieman, I agree. It’s sad that we’ve taken a pretty, evocative word denoting something delightful in nature and turned it into a pejorative.

Snowflake where I live means someone who flits back and forth all year long from their house in The Villages to their other house or houses. Snowbirds come down for 3–6 months in the winter, but stay straight through. This new meaning for snowflake created a problem in communication.

Not liberals, conservatives, spoiled kids, annoying customers, or any other person. Just flakes of snow.

I don’t think any two snowflakes are alike. Even identical twins are not exactly alike. Just the fact that the environmental aspects are at play on them, as they are falling, and where they land, would change them.

It could take a long time to get the same snowflake if to are alike.

@Kardamom, I’m sure you’re right that environmental conditions would change them.

So let me just ask as a follow-up: Suppose two snowflakes start out as different, and conditions change them—couldn’t they change to become alike instead of changing from alike to different?

And, either way, if they were ever alike at some point, wouldn’t that count as alike?

two will be alike but it is rare if not impossible for two to be alike.

I mean the same

Yes
https://news.umanitoba.ca/the-math-and-physics-of-snowflakes/
No
https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/physics-snowflakes

I do, because I will never find two that are the same. If by chance I found two that appeared identical if I examined them through a microscope, I’m sure I would eventually find a difference. Just curious, but why is “popcorn” one of the question’s tags?

There are many aspects to this question, touching on belief, philosophy and science.

A snowflake constrained to be less than 100 molecules would easily find a match.

In the real world once you start doin’ the math’ on naturally forming ice crystals you quickly require almost an eternity of time.

What about a nice hot cup of deuterium and O18 (mixed with H2O) while we wait.

I still don’t think that any two snowflakes, even if almost identical, can ever be exactly alike, nor can anything, for the reason I stated above. Even if one thing was a clone, the fact that it is sitting/falling/landed a sixteenth of an inch to the left or right of the other, that is in and of itself an “environmental factor” involving the minutest of differences, whether it be temperature, solidity of surface, or simply the breeze. And nothing is created/born/made at exactly the same time, so the environmental factors, including time bearing on the thing, would be different, if even slightly. Because it is a “different thing” by definition, it cannot be exactly the same. Not clones, not twins, not the 2nd or hundredth pressing of a CD from the same original source of music file.

For the same reason, I don’t think two different things can ever become exactly alike, no matter what happens to them, because they are still two different things.

I agree with @Kardamom.

@flutherother, because the same is said of popcorn: no two popped kernels will be alike.

I could have listed pregnancies, marriages, families, feet, and all the other things that are so commonly and emphatically said to be unique, especially in advertising. I’ve never understood the point of the assertion, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true. No two [pairs of] feet are alike? What use is that kind of information, if true? They are enough alike that shoes can be made, bought, and worn.