Page 145 - Miracles Within the Molecule

Snow crys tals, attached to one
anoth er with loose bonds,
assume dif fer ent shapes from
one anoth er due to dif fer en ces in
the struc tures of their water mol -
e cu les. Thus it is almost impos si -
ble for a pair of snow flakes to be
iden ti cal.

these mol e cu les can still exhib it vari e ty. One out of every 5,000 water
mol e cu les may con tain a deu te ri um atom instead of a hydro gen one.
Additionally, in every 500 atoms there may be one oxy gen atom with an
atom ic weight of 18 instead of 16. This dif fer ence caus es a com bi na tion
when ice crys tal li zes. There are 10 18 water mol e cu les in a sin gle snow -
flake, and due to the vari e ty of water mol e cu les just described, 10 15 of
the water mol e cu les form ing a snow flake will be dif fer ent from the oth -
ers. According to this cal cu la tion, there is a 1 in 10 24 possibility of two
snow flakes hav ing exact ly the same sequence and shape. But the prob-
ability of such hav ing occurred since the begin ning of the uni verse is
zero! 67
The real ly inter est ing fact is that all this infi nite vari e ty of snow -
flakes pos sess es a per fect, flaw less sym me try.

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