Snowflake

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One of a kind?. There's nothing like this

This close-up photograph of a snowflake shows the classic, six-sided structure associated with this tiny winter marvel. Until the advent of macro- and micro-photography in the late 1800s, it was impossible to study the structure of snowflakes as they melted too quickly to be accurately sketched under a microscope. Enter Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley. An American farmer and self-trained scientist, Bentley was the first person to successfully photograph an individual snowflake.

Over his lifetime, he would produce more than 5,000 different images and he was the first person to observe that every snowflake is unique. He backed this up with some maths and meteorology as well. He understood that snowflakes form as they fall through the sky and their growth and appearance are shaped by hundreds of changing conditions such as altitude, temperature and humidity. This combination of factors means there are more snowflake design possibilities than molecules on Earth. So while some identical-looking snowflakes have been grown under lab conditions, in the wild you’ll never find two exactly alike.