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Climate and Weather

Precipitation

Are all snowflakes shaped alike?

Some snowflakes may have strikingly similar shapes, but these twins are probably not molecularly identical. In 1986, cloud physicist Nancy Knight believed she found a uniquely cloned pair of crystals on an oil coated slide that had been hanging from an airplane. This pair may have been the result of breaking off from a star crystal, or were attached side by side, thereby experiencing the same weather conditions simultaneously. Unfortunately the smaller aspects of each of the snow crystals could not be studied because the photograph was unable to capture possible molecular differences. So, even if the human eye may see twin flakes, on a minuscule level these flakes are different.



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