The anatomy of snowflakes has been studied for hundreds of years. But just what is it that makes one snowflake differ from ...

If humidity is low, there isn’t as much water vapour in the atmosphere so the snowflakes form something called 'plates', the flat hexagonal shapes you see if you look at them under a microscope.

A microscope lets you isolate individual ... has spent years playing with and studying snowflakes. Libbrecht grows snowflakes in the lab under carefully controlled conditions.

...but these are freshly fallen snowflakes, or snow crystals, resting on wool. They are around 1 millimeter in size and were captured using a simple, cheap photography technique. When the snow ...