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Two Snowflakes May Be Alike After All
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting that it may be possible for two snowflakes to be alike after all. For anyone who studies probability, this seems reasonable, given that the article mentions that 10^24 snowflakes fall in any given year. The article contains links to fascinating snowflake pictures. From the article: 'A typical snow crystal weighs roughly one millionth of a gram. This means a cubic foot of snow can contain roughly one billion crystals ... "It is probably safe to say that the possible number of snow crystal shapes exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the known universe," Nelson said. Still, while "no two snowflakes are alike" might hold true for larger snowflakes, Nelson figures it might ring false for smaller crystals that sometimes fall before they have a chance to fully develop. "How likely is it that two snowflakes are alike? Very likely if we define alike to mean that we would have trouble distinguishing them under a microscope and if we include the crystals that hardly develop beyond the prism stage--that is, the smallest snow crystals," Nelson said.'"
I am special. And I'm going to be famous.
What goes up must come down. (suspected true)
Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. (obviously false (ouch!))
A watched pot never boils. etc...
This is like numerology. You take a bunch of squishy data (aphorisms) and attempt to rigorously evaluate them.
I am reminded of Charlie Brown's answer to the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" His answer: Eight if they're skinny, four if they're fat.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
If someone tells you "You're one in a million," there are 6,571 people exactly like you.
Nancy Knight, 1988
3 95.htm
"The old saw that no two snow crystals are identical was disproved in 1988, when National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Nancy Knight found two that apparently were. The twin crystals were found by accident when Knight was examining samples collected at 6 kilometers (20,000 feet) over Wisconsin for a cloud-climatology study. Thick, hollow, and columnar, the crystals seem to have been Siamese twins that grew attached to each other. No satisfying explanation has yet been found." -
http://www.proquestk12.com/curr/snow/snow395/snow
From snowflake chemistry
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This isn't news. No truism is 100% true.
including that one?
my pet machine
. .
[/sarcasm]
Leave the snowflakes alone, try to research if we can get something to fuel our cars after a decade or two or try to find the cure for utter stupidity. Hearing something useful coming out from science is rather rare these days, probably because really interesting stuff is not published or wouldn't interest the business giants like oil producers.
. .
Believe it or not the largest payout from research is generally not directly the target of the research. We call this serendipity
Off the top of my head the study of this subject would require the researcher to apply his efforts (described here as apparently useless) on the details of crystal formation, manipulating factors of said formation, crystalline structure, and the statistical analysis of crystal formation, besides who knows how many other details that we will never know because we weren't involved.
Let me see if I can come up with some "useless" applications for knowledge in this research track. How about crystalline formation in metals? I bet the aerospace industry has no need for this type of knowledge as they try to come up with ways to grow single crystal blocks of titanium to form turbine blades or anything else that requires insanely high strength. As an example (from memory): the tensile strength of cast iron is a little more then 10,000 psi. The tensile strength of iron formed as a single crystal is somewhere around 100,000 psi! If I remember correctly, the single crystal tensile strength of carbon is 500,000 psi. The reason for these amazing numbers is that the primary weakness is always the crystalline boundaries. (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_crystal )
Another "useless" application of this type of research is crystalline formation as it relates to pharmaceutical research. Did you know that the (apparently unimportant and profitless) pharmaceutical companies actually sent an experiment up into orbit just so they could see how crystals grow in zero G? That sounds like it must be an incredibly lavish waste of their shareholder's money (by one of the greediest industries in the world (personal opinion)).
Fun facts:
- When you analyze a crystal you can tell the strength of the gravity field it was formed under.
- Crystalline formation is a state change and controlling this can allow you to do all sorts of interesting things from scalding the hell out of yourself heating water in a microwave, to creating so called meta materials.(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_materials )
- And finally: Utter stupidity is often caused by not looking any deeper then the surface of a subject. (reference: http://www.suck.com/daily/97/11/12/1.html )