The Science Behind the Saying
"No two snowflakes are alike" started as a photography project, not a proverb, and the physics behind it holds up remarkably well.
The Vermont farmer who photographed thousands of snowflakes
Wilson Bentley, a self-taught scientist and farmer from Jericho, Vermont, spent over 45 years photographing individual snow crystals starting in 1885, when he successfully attached a bellows camera to a microscope, a technique no one had managed before. By the end of his life he had captured more than 5,000 images of snow crystals and never found two that were identical. His photographs were published in a 1931 book, Snow Crystals, that remains a reference work for snow science nearly a century later.
Bentley didn't coin the phrase "no two snowflakes are alike," but his life's work is the reason the idea moved from folk observation to something photographically documented at scale.
Why the physics actually backs up the claim
A single snow crystal can be built from anywhere between roughly 10^18 and 10^19 water molecules, and the exact shape it takes depends on the specific temperature and humidity it passes through as it falls, conditions that change by fractions of a degree over the crystal's few-minute journey to the ground. Given the sheer number of molecules involved and the number of possible micro-variations in atmospheric conditions, the mathematical odds of two complex snow crystals forming in an identical arrangement are, for all practical purposes, zero.
- Simple, symmetric snow crystals can occasionally look very similar, but complex dendritic crystals almost never do.
- Snow crystal shape is primarily determined by temperature, with humidity affecting how elaborate the branching becomes.
- Bentley's photography technique, a bellows camera mounted to a microscope, was novel enough in 1885 that he had to develop it largely on his own.
The design
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Shop All T-Shirts →Frequently Asked Questions
Did Wilson Bentley ever find two matching snowflakes?
No. Across more than 5,000 photographed crystals over 45+ years, he never documented two identical complex snow crystals.
Is it really impossible for two snowflakes to match exactly?
For complex crystals, the odds are astronomically small given the number of molecules and atmospheric variables involved, though very simple crystal shapes can occasionally look alike.
What made Bentley's photography method groundbreaking?
He was among the first to successfully attach a camera to a microscope to photograph snow crystals before they melted, a technical challenge that had stumped earlier attempts.
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