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Short Stuff: Unique Snowflakes · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Jerry, and this is the abbreviated version of stuff
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: you should know short stuff, that's right, And this one
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about uh as as dumb hippie liberals.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about our favorite thing, snowflakes. Oh man,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: it's funny how that guy co opted because I think
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: it's quite a compliment. I'm like, yeah, I am an individual.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I am a unique. You want to
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: know what you do when somebody calls you a snowflake?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: You just smile and twirl to show them all you
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: got and say, who doesn't love snowflakes? Love being a snowflake?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: So here's the deal. But the whole point of this
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: uh fourteen minutes that you're gonna undertake with us is
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the old um not wives tale, because it's true, the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: old notion that snowflakes are actually unique, every single snowflake
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: is actually unique. And the answer to that, we're happy
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: to say is yes, it certainly seems to be the case. Yeah,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it's awesome. I feel like we've done something on this,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: like maybe in one of our short videos before something
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: like that, But I wonder if we said the opposite.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: But now that we did this research, I'm like, how
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: could we possibly have said the opposite. It's just not
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: it's not possible. Yeah, I mean we we should say
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that a lot of snowflakes, and we're gonna go through
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: how they're they're formed. But in the very early stages
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: snowflakes can be pretty identical and and even in the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: end sometimes they can be similar. But technically they are
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: all unique because so many different things can affect each
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: individual snowflake along the way that there's just no way
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that they could be the same. Yeah. It takes a
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: mind boggling number of factors and inputs, each of which
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: variables I guess you'd call them, each of which can
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: change and just changed to one of them, got a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: different snowflake, changed to a couple, it got an even
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: more different snowflake. There's just so many, so many different
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: things that go into making a snowflake that, yeah, it's
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it's just not possible that they're not all unique. But
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to understand all this, you have to understand how a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: snowflake is made. And by golly, Chuck and I are
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: just the people to tell you all right, So we
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: did some. I think it was our our happy Clouds
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: episode which was really terrific quite a few years ago,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: which you can refer to if you want a longer explanation.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: But um, when when rain or in this case snow
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: falls out of the sky, it starts down on the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: surface of the earth, um as water that evaporates from
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: our lakes, our oceans are rivers, rises up into the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: atmosphere as water vapor, and sometimes that can form a
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: happy puffy cloud. It can and then depending on the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: type of cloud, and if it's cold enough, which it
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: usually is, some of that water vapor will condense around,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: say like a piece of dust or something like that.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It will condense in from water vapor which is a gas,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: into liquid which is a liquid water, and usually it
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: does it around like a piece of dust or something
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: that that nucleates it. But what what another way to
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: say it is it reaches its dew point, the point
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: where the temperature where it changes from vapor into liquid.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And as it does that, if it's cold enough, it
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: will then turn into ice. And what you have is
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: basically the the beginning standard template of a snowflake, which
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: if you stopped and said, okay, right, now, are all
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: snowflakes alike? You would say, yeah, they're actually they're they're
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: pretty similar. Sure, we'll go with that. But that's just
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: like the beginning of the snowflake. It's the basis of it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: It's the, like I said, the template that all snowflakes
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: start from. And it's usually just a little six sided
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: hexagonal plate. Yeah. So you have these little tiny ice crystals. Uh,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: they start floating around in the sky and smashing and
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: colliding with other water vapor molecules along the way, and
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: every time it does that, it collects. Uh well, yeah,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I guess it collects. It sort of con tacks these
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: crystals and it sort of just starts collecting this stuff
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and getting a little more solid and a little more
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  Speaker 1: substantial all around that little original nucleus that was where
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: they were all similar to one another. Right. And then
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: so this snowflake, as it's kind of moving around up
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: in the atmosphere like I'm building, I'm growing, it runs
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: into other water vapor, and that water vapor rather than
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: going through the trouble of moving from a gas to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a liquid to a solid, which is you know, an
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: ice crystal it just it. It goes through what's called deposition.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: It goes straight from water vapor into a solid and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: attaches to that snowflake template. And as it does so, um,
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  Speaker 1: it will start to form some of the more intricate
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: details of that snowflake. And that happens again and again
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and again and again, and you get layer after layer
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: after layer of ice crystals forming on this plate, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you have like arms that account
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: and those arms stick to get detailed. Now the snowflake
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: is starting to take shape. So you've got water vapor
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: that freezes and starts to attract other water vapor that
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: freezes onto it, that starts to give snowflakes their size
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and their shape. But there's lots more variables involved. That's right,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And we'll take a little break here. We're gonna come
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: back and talk about the remaining formation of snowflakes read
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: after this. M M all right. So you mentioned that
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: it was hexagonal or did you say hexagonal? I think
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I said hexagonal like a dumb dumb uh. And so
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  Speaker 1: you know, you've got these little arms sticking out, and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: sometimes on the edge of these arms are a little jagged. Uh.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like jagged like a serrated knife. And
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: these uneven areas as you know, exactly what you think.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Because they're uneven and stuff sticking out a little farther,
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  Speaker 1: it's gonna attract even more water molecules than it would
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: if it was smooth and uniform like other parts of
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: that same snowflake. So that's how you build out. When
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you think of like or if you see a you know,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a microscopic view of a snowflake, Uh, those are what
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: those little arms and those little jagged crystal sticking off
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: that make it so beautiful. That's what's going on there, right,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And like you said, because these arms are kind of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: like sticking out there, they're attracting more and more water
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: vapor that's sticking to them, and it's building out and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: growing out into this um larger, more intricate, more detailed
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: crystalline structure. So once you have those arms, it seems
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: to be almost like, uh, I don't want to say
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: a tipping point, you know why, but um, that is
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: what happens, and all of a sudden, the snowflakes starts
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to really take shape. Yeah, and here's where the environment
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: comes into play, because depending on a lot of different
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: factors like, uh, temperature obviously humidity, um like really really
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: really cold temperature that will really vary what kind of
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: snowflakes like size and shape that you're gonna get. Yeah,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And I was like why temperature. So temperature is a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: measure of the um the movement the energy of like
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: uh like molecules or atoms or whatever, right, but I
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure out why the lower the temperature, the more
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: intricate the snowflake got. Yeah, what is that? Everything I
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: saw was just basically like, that's just the way it is. Yeah,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So that's what we're gonna have to go with you. Basically,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: is this is the way it is. If you understand
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: why that is the case, please tell us because we
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: want to know. Right. But like those when you think
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: of those, uh they describe it as fern like arms,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: like those awesome looking arms with all the little jagged
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: things sticking off. That's when it's like prime snowflake time,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: when it's super super cold, right precisely, um so, uh,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: you've got extra moisture, like if it's a little more humid,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: that that's gonna affect the shape of the snowflake. It's
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: gonna make them fatter usually and then lower temperature. So
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: if you've got somehow higher higher humidity, lower temperature, that's
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: when you get your true money snowflakes that people like
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: put on the cover of National Geographic Yeah, lower humidity
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: is flatter, um higher is fatter, Right, That's that's the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: rhyme that I was raised with. Uh And and like
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: you said, if it's super humid and super cold, that's
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: that's the rock star. Yes, So okay, that's the physics
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of making a snowflake. There's all those different variables. There's
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: some other ones to Like, snowflakes that are forming will
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: collide with one another, then some of their arms will
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: break off, so they'll that will then attract even more crystals.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: So that's going to change the shape and of it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Um the different conditions that form that are all factors
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and variables in the forming of a snowflake. All of
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: those things change from cubic centimeter cubic millimeter of air
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  Speaker 1: um between one next to another. So snowflake that forms
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: in this one part of is passing through this one
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  Speaker 1: part of the atmosphere is going to be subject to
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: these variables. But the same variables will be totally different,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple of cubic centimeters over. So you've
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: got all these different variables that are are coming into it,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and apparently when you add these variables up, it becomes
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: a there becomes a mind boggling number of different possible
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: combinations of snowflakes, shapes, and crystalline structure, so much so
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that it just seems basically impossible that the over the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: current age of the universe, certainly over the current age
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of Earth, that enough snowflakes have fallen that two of
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: them could ever have been Like, yeah, so they estimate
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: um as many as a quintillion quintillion number of molecules
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: or quintillion molecules in a single snowflake, and that the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: possible combinations of all these molecules and potential combinations are
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: two times as many as atoms as there are atoms
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: in the entire universe. So I look that up. Is
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: that could that be possible? That's that's what this article says.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: The number of atoms in the universe is either between
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: ten to the seventy eight power and ten to the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: eighties second power total atoms in the universe, which is
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: between ten quadrillion vigintillion and no, I swear to God
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: and a hundred thousand quadrillion vigintilions atoms, so twice that
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: twice that he literally decided like like a ten year
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: old quintillion bill basically, so that that there's that many
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: different possible combinations of snowflakes um and that's just the structure.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: If you take into account the different the different water
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: molecules that come together, what time span would it take
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: for enough snowflakes to fall and enough of this this
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: this snowflake formation to happen, that all of those same
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: water molecules happened to come together again, and that snowflake
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: happens to take the same form because it's exposed to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the same variables. It's just it probably will never ever
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: ever happen. Yeah, I mean, a tiny fleck of dust
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: can change the crystals. Uh. The angle where you know
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: we're talking about how they collide with one another. It's
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: it's like a car crash. If you get t boned,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: your cars are going look different than if you get
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: hit head on. It's the same. They're depending on the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: angle in which they collide that's going to change the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: shape of the snowflake, so it really seems true that
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: there may have never been to snowflake e exactly like
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: in the end, you may be the first human being
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to ever use a car crash to illustrate how snowflakes
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: can be different. Oh goodness. Uh, so that's why everyone,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: you can go around and feel very confident explaining to
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: all of your friends and co workers and loved ones
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that it is true no two snowflakes are like. They're
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: all unique and different. Uh. And if you want to
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: get in touch with us about this, you can go
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: onto our website stuff we Should Know dot com, check
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: out our social links there, and you can send us
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: an email to stuff podcast how Stuff Works dot com.