The Magic in the Snowflakes

 Hi everybody!  

  Have you ever seen a snowflake up close? They have incredible and very curious shapes! Today I will explain the relevant relationship between snowflakes and geometry.

As you all know, a snowflake is a small ice structure that is generated in clouds when water droplets freeze; although each snowflake is unique and has its own shape, they have one characteristic in common: a hexagonal symmetry. A snowflake is formed when a water droplet in a cloud transforms into an ice crystal; the more water vapour condenses on that crystal, the larger it becomes. Depending on the temperature and humidity, these water molecules cause different geometric shapes to form.

In addition, temperature and humidity also influence how the branches of the snowflake develop, giving rise to an infinite number of shapes and sizes; this process makes each snowflake unique, even though they share the same formation.

All snowflakes have six sides, so they have hexagonal symmetry. This is because water molecules form a hexagonal lattice creating 120-degree angles; this composition makes it the most stable way for water molecules to form a solid state. In fact, if we look at a snowflake through a microscope, we can see different hexagons, stars and branches, each with specific geometric patterns.

        - Hexagons form the base of a snowflake, this is because the water molecules, when joined together, tend to form 120-degree angles with each other.

        -Stars and branching derive from the increasing size of the hexagonal base of the snowflake; branching forms stars or other more complex structures. These branches develop symmetrically due to the conditions in the cloud, so that each side of the snowflake grows similarly.

As future teachers, we can invite students in the classroom to create their own snowflake. To do this, they will need paper, scissors and a pencil.

First, they should fold a square of paper into a triangle, then fold the triangle in half to form a smaller triangle, and again fold the last triangle in thirds to form a kind of cone.Next, they should draw geometric patterns on the folded paper and then cut them out; once all the steps have been completed, they can unfold the paper and discover what their snowflake looks like.

Here is a link to a video so that you can do this activity in the classroom:

Finally, everything explained in relation to snowflakes is a clear example of how geometry is involved in nature and in many other areas of everyday life. 

I hope you found it useful and learned some new things about snowflakes! Next time it snows, you can look at the geometric patterns of the flakes and see how they differ from each other.

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See you next time!