Like snowflakes, supporting Science News can take ... When water molecules chill down, they assemble into a myriad of spectacular shapes from simple hexagons to star-shaped dendrites.

and one of the first observers to study snowflake shapes seriously. Over the course of 40 years, Bentley perfected techniques for making microphotographs of snowflakes and made thousands of such ...

That shape changes even further as they fall through the air. As each snowflake falls, it encounters water vapour in the atmosphere. This has a big effect on its shape. If humidity is low ...

While they all start pretty much the same, once they start crystallizing, it’s true that no two snowflakes are alike. In fact, the number of possible shapes is staggering.