Name: The science of snowflakes with Brian Cox | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2025-10-03T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 4 min 33 s
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Snowflakes are intricate, beautiful, mysterious,

But for all their complexity and endless variety,

the structure of a snowflake can be explained by a few universal laws of nature.

Laws that explain everything from snowflakes to galaxies.

Or, to use its more technical name, a snow crystal.

when water vapour meets little specks of dust or pollen.

and then more water molecules, and then more.

These form the branches of our snowflake.

depends on the exact temperature and humidity

that the snowflake meets on its journey through the clouds,

Each one takes a very slightly different route,

meaning no two snowflakes are quite the same.

it's been on its own, totally unique journey to reach you,

Way back in 1611, on a bitterly cold January morning in Prague,

a snowflake landed on the sleeve of mathematician Johannes Kepler.

Kepler's breakthrough was his theory that this hexagonal pattern

Whether it's a honeycomb within a beehive,

is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

As the water molecules cluster together when they freeze,

the angle between the hydrogen atoms is always approximately 105 degrees.

At its heart, a snowflake is always a hexagon.

But it can grow into all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes.

Long and thin like a pencil, sharp like a needle,

cylindrical like a bullet, or just occasionally triangular.

The truth is, though, most snowflakes are kind of, well, blob-like.

If you speak to a snowflake photographer,

They'll tell you it takes days and days out in the cold to get that money shot.

And the conditions have to be just right,

painstakingly took the first photos of stunning snowflakes in 1885,

Scientists have shown that symmetry is incredibly pleasing to the human brain.

which means you can cut them into identical slices like a cake.

even spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, share this type of symmetry.

And nature has one last trick up its sleeve.

They're clear, but they have lots of edges,

and this scatters the light, making them appear white.

Each snowflake is a microcosm of the laws of physics.

It's the same with the stars, and solar systems, and planets, and with us.

you can read its history, its own unique story.

The experiences it encounters shape it into what it is.

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The science of snowflakes with Brian Cox | BBC Ideas

weird

stick

incredibly

slightly