Nature · Study 031
Snowflake Press
A snowflake generator: one random arm is grown, mirrored and repeated six times to form a new ice crystal every few seconds.
What you're looking at
Only one twelfth of each flake is designed: a main spine with a random number of side branches at crystal angles, some carrying smaller barbs. That wedge is mirrored and rotated in steps of sixty degrees. The symmetry does the rest, turning a handful of random strokes into something that looks deliberate.
The idea behind it
Real snow crystals are six sided because water molecules bond into a hexagonal lattice. Each arm experiences nearly the same temperature and humidity on its way down, so the arms grow alike, while the path through the cloud is different for every crystal.
Try this
Click or tap to press a new flake right away. Otherwise one forms every seven seconds.
