Snowflake Conundrum

"No two snowflakes are exactly alike" is sometimes heard and is probably true. However, the six arms of a snowflake are often strikingly alike. A snowflake grows from a central nucleus, and as it grows from condensing water vapor, the arms grow simultaneously and similarly. How does the growing tip of a snowflake arm know what the other five are doing so it can grow like them? That's what I call the "snowflake conundrum."

I first posed this question to a student member of the high school robotics team, Beach Cities Robotics several years ago, with the suggestion that the answer to the conundrum may lie in quantum entanglement.


A symmetrical snowflake.

Email Richard dot J dot Wagner at gmail dot com


index.html, this file created October 28, 2014.
Last updated October 28, 2014, by Rick Wagner. Copyright © 2014, all rights reserved.