Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Unique Snowflakes

Episode Date: December 19, 2018

Amazingly, it turns out that every snowflake truly is unique. Math backs it up.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry and this is the abbreviated version of stuff You should know short stuff That's right in this one. We're gonna talk about As as dumb hippy liberals, we're gonna talk about our favorite thing snowflakes

Oh, man It's funny how that got co-opted because I think it's quite a compliment. I'm like, yeah, I am an individual I know I am unique. You want to know what you do when somebody calls you a snowflake You just smile and twirl to show them all you got. Yeah and say who doesn't love snowflakes So here's the deal but the whole point of this 14 minutes that you're gonna undertake with us is the old It's not wives tale because it's true the old notion that Snowflakes are actually unique every single snowflake is actually unique and the answer to that

We're happy to say is yes. It certainly seems to be the case. Yeah, it's awesome I feel like we've done something on this like maybe in one of our short videos before something like that maybe but I Wonder if we said the opposite but now that we did this research I'm like, how could we possibly have said the opposite? It's just not it's not possible Yeah, I mean we should say that a lot of snowflakes and we're gonna go through how they're they're formed But in the very early stages snowflakes can be pretty identical and and even in the end sometimes they can be similar But technically they are all unique right because so many different things Can affect each individual snowflake along a way that there's just no way that they could be the same

Yeah, it takes a mind-boggling number of factors and inputs each of which variables I guess you call them each of which can change and Just change to one of them got a different snowflake change to a couple it got an even more different snowflake There's just so many so many different things that go into making a snowflake that yeah It's just not possible that they're not all unique But to understand all this you have to understand how a snowflake is made and by golly Chuck and I are just the people to tell you All right, so we did some I think it was our happy clouds episode, which was really terrific

Quite a few years ago, which you can refer to if you want a longer explanation, but When rain or in this case snow falls out of the sky it starts down on the surface of the earth as water that evaporates from our lakes our oceans our rivers rises up into the atmosphere as water vapor and Sometimes that can form a happy puffy cloud It can and then depending on the type of cloud and if it's cold enough, which it usually is Some of that water vapor will Condense around say like a piece of dust or something like that

It will condense in from water vapor, which is a gas into liquid, which is a liquid water And usually it does it around like a piece of dust or something that that nucleates it But what what another way to say it is it reaches its dew point the point or the temperature where it changes from vapor Into liquid and as it does that if it's cold enough it will then turn into ice and what you have is basically the Beginning standard template of a snowflake, which if you stopped and said okay right now are all snowflakes alike You would say yeah, they're actually they're pretty similar sure we'll go with that But that's just like the beginning of the snowflake. It's the the basis of it It's the like I said the template that all snowflakes start from and it's usually just a little six-sided hexagonal plate

Yeah, so you have these little tiny ice crystals They start floating around in the sky and smashing and colliding with other water vapor molecules along the way and every time it does that it collects well, yeah, I guess it collects it sort of contacts these crystals and It sort of just starts collecting the stuff and getting a little more solid and a little more substantial All around that little original nucleus that was where they were all similar to one another, right? And then so this snowflake as it's kind of moving around up in the atmosphere like I'm building. I'm growing It runs into other water vapor and that water vapor rather than going through the trouble of moving from a gas To a liquid to a solid, which is you know an ice crystal. It just it goes through what's called deposition

It goes straight from water vapor into a solid and attaches to that snowflake template and as it does so um It will start to form some of the more intricate Details of that snowflake and that happens again and again and again and again And you get layer after layer after layer of ice crystals forming on this plate and all of a sudden you have like Arms that stick out and those arms to get detailed and now the snowflake is starting to take shape So you've got water vapor that freezes and starts to attract other water vapor that freezes onto it

That starts to give snowflakes their size and their shape, but there's lots more Um variables involved. That's right, and we'll take a little break here. We're gonna come back and talk about the remaining formation of snowflakes right after this Hey everybody when you're staying at an air bnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an air bnb? And if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could air bnb her cozy backyard tree house And the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So, yeah, you might not realize it

But you might have an air bnb too find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca slash host On the podcast paydude the 90s called David lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster?

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All right, so you mentioned that it was uh hexagonal Or did you say hexagonal? I think I said hexagonal like a dumb dumb Uh, and so, you know, you got these little arms sticking out and sometimes on the edge of these arms. They're a little uh jagged Uh, it's sort of like jagged like a serrated knife and these uneven areas It's you know, exactly what you think because they're uneven and stuff sticking out a little farther It's going to attract even more water molecules

Then it would if it was smooth and uniform like other parts of that same snowflake So that's how you build out when you think of like or if you see a You know a microscopic view of a snowflake Uh, those are what those little arms and those little jagged crystals sticking off that make it so beautiful That's what's going on there right and like you said Because these arms are kind of like sticking out there. They're attracting more and more water vapor that's sticking to them And it's building out and growing out into this um larger more intricate more detailed crystalline structure So once you have those arms, it seems to be almost like uh, I don't want to say a tipping point

You know why but um That is what happens and all of a sudden the snowflake starts to really take shape Yeah, and here's where the environment comes into play because depending on a lot of different factors like uh temperature obviously uh humidity Like really really really cold temperature. Mm-hmm that will really vary what kind of snowflakes like size and shape that you're going to get Yeah, and I was like why temperature so temperature is a measure of the um the movement the energy of like uh Like molecules or atoms or whatever right? Yeah, but I couldn't figure out why the lower the temperature the more intricate The snowflake got yeah, what is that everything? I saw was just basically like

That's just the way it is. Yeah, so that's what we're gonna have to go with too basically is This is the way it is if you understand why that is the case, please tell us because we want to know right Yeah, like those when you think of those uh, they describe it as fern like arms Like those awesome looking arms with all the little jagged things sticking off That's when it's like prime snowflake time when it's super super cold, right precisely. Um, so Uh, you've got extra moisture Like if it's a little more humid that that's gonna affect the shape of the snowflake It's gonna make them fatter usually and then lower temperature. So if you got

Somehow higher higher humidity lower temperature That's when you get your true money snowflakes that people like put on the cover of national geographic. Yeah lower humidity is flatter Um higher is fatter. Is that right? That's that's the rhyme that I was raised with Uh And and like you said if it's super humid and super cold, that's that's the rock star. Yes, okay So, okay, that's the physics of making a snowflake. There's all those different variables There's some other ones too like snowflakes that are forming will collide with one another Then some of their arms will break off. So they'll that will then attract even more ice crystals

So that's going to change the shape and of it They the different conditions that form that are all factors and variables in the forming of a snowflake All of those things change from cubic centimeter or cubic millimeter of air Um between one next to another so a snowflake that forms in this one part or is passing through this one part of the atmosphere Yeah, it's going to be subject to these variables, but the same variables will be totally different You know a couple of cubic centimeters over so you've got all these different variables that are coming into it and Apparently when you add these variables up

It becomes a there becomes a mind boggling number of different possible combinations of A snowflake shapes and crystalline structure so much so that it just seems basically impossible that the Over the current age of the universe certainly over the current age of earth that enough snowflakes have fallen That two of them could ever have been alike. Yeah, so they estimate as many as a quintillion Quintillion number of molecules or quintillion molecules In a single snowflake and that the possible combinations of all these molecules and potential combinations are

Two times as many as atoms as there are atoms in the entire universe So I look that up. Is that could that be possible? That's that's what this article says. Yeah The number of atoms in the universe is either between 10 to the 78th power And 10 to the 82nd power total atoms in the universe, which is between 10 quadrillion Vigintillion And a hundred made that up. No, I swear to god and 100,000 quadrillion Vigintillion Adams so twice that twice that you literally just sounded like like a 10 year old

I know I felt like a million contillion billion basically So that there's that many different possible combinations of snowflakes. Um, and that's just the structure If you take into account the different the different water molecules that come together What time span would it take? Yeah for Enough snowflakes to fall in enough of this this this snowflake formation to happen That all of those same water molecules happen to come together again And that snowflake happens to take the same form because it's exposed to the same variables

It just it probably will never ever ever happen. Yeah, I mean a tiny fleck of dust can change the crystals Yeah, the angle where you know, we're talking about how they collide with one another It's it's like a car crash if you get t-boned Your car's going to look different than if you get hit head on right and it's the same there depending on the angle In which they collide that's going to change the shape of the snowflake So it really seems true that there may have never been two snowflakes exactly like In the end you may be the first human being to ever use a car crash to illustrate how snowflakes can be different Oh goodness

Uh, so that's why everyone you can go around and feel very confident explaining to all of your friends and co-workers and loved ones That it is true. No two snowflakes are alike. They're all unique and different. Uh, and if you want to get in touch with us About this you can go on to our website stuff. We should know.com check out our social links there And uh, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com