The real story
Wilson Bentley was nineteen when he rigged a microscope to a camera and photographed a single snowflake before it melted. He spent the rest of his life doing it and captured more than 5,000. People called him 'Snowflake' Bentley.
Every flake has six arms because of the way water molecules lock together into ice. But the details of each arm depend on the exact temperature and humidity the flake passes through as it falls. No two flakes take the same path, so no two end up the same.
