Max's Snowflake Lab

Hi, I'm Max! 👋

Hey, I'm Max! A real snowflake takes about fifteen minutes to grow, way up inside a cloud, and then it melts on your glove before you get a proper look. So we are going to do the whole fifteen minutes down here, in about ten seconds, blown up huge. You get two dials. One is how cold the cloud is and one is how damp it is, and you can turn them while the crystal is still growing, which is the fun bit. Watch what happens to the arms right at the moment you turn the cold one up. That is not a trick, real snowflakes do exactly that on the way down, because they keep falling into different weather. And here is the thing to look for. However complicated it gets, count the arms. Six. Always six. That is because a water molecule is bent, like a wide letter V, and when bent Vs freeze together the only shape they make is a six-sided ring. Every arm is that ring, copied outwards. Go on, press Grow.