Snow flakes and human thought

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

See I am being funny every body look I am making the joke with Ron .
alex

Can you define exactly what part of your last posting was actually funny, let's say...in under 1,000 words

[xelasnave]

Now Ron you know a joke loses its impact if you have to explain it .Still 1000 words seems to appeal somehow
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Now Ron you know a joke loses its impact if you have to explain it .Still 1000 words seems to appeal somehow
alex

Sorry, typo.... I forgot the decimal point, it was supposed to say, in under 10.00 words

[xelasnave]

Well you lost me I am afraid
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Okay, so consider the snowflake, if it changed form, i.e. melted to liquid, would not all liquid be the same, in chemical breakdown, but not in quantity?

So is a melted snowflake no less a snowflake, just because it's electrons are agitated?

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by tailwag

Okay, so consider the snowflake, if it changed form, i.e. melted to liquid, would not all liquid be the same, in chemical breakdown, but not in quantity?

So is a melted snowflake no less a snowflake, just because it's electrons are agitated?

mmm I think I will start with identical amount of steam..that should do it. I think we are on the verge of a break thru Ron I see a new level of silliness can now be reached
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Well for the record, I believe statements like, "No two snowflakes are the same" is a nonsense, but I totally agree that, "No two snowflakes are the same (Snowflake)".

You see the statement is both correct and incorrect at the same time, it's simply a question of which context you take the word 'same' in. The keyword is same, not snowflake.

So everyone wins this argument, regardless of which side they were on

[xelasnave]

Which proves we are all winners here.. a wonderful observation Ron which brings up the absolutely riveting subject of context now there are various contexts to regard in analysing any word really. We have social and historic context which probably should be covered first before we look at sub groups within those contexts for example both social and histoic can include but not limit their application the economic context which should not be confussed with pure cultural context. Now the first indication we see histroically of the important of context ....hulo Ron people are leaving the street now we can look at that in the context of the lights out an example of one the one hand cultural context yet on the other political and indeed economic context.. the political context leaks into the area of economic context... but before I offer a detailed comment I feel I should let the moderators catch up.. the lights going out together with power may see them having server problem so in that context I will pick this up later. I am happy however to conserve power I will leave out smilies.
alex
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

You should not confuse context with intent. The basis of the spoken word should be that he who said it, owns the rights to let them mean whatever he intended. It is therefore not within the domain of the listener to make a determination as to what the speaker meant, although that is the primary purpose that the speaker spoke it

[xelasnave]

mmm intent interesting you should bring that up as I have no opinion on intent other than its application to the criminal law.. Ron you have the advantage my battery on the lap top means I must conceed..hang on I was wrong but I can only offer a few short pages to outline the basics here .
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

mmm intent interesting you should bring that up as I have no opinion on intent other than its application to the criminal law.. Ron you have the advantage my battery on the lap top means I must conceed..hang on I was wrong but I can only offer a few short pages to outline the basics here .
alex

Oh no, not the flat battery gambit

[xelasnave]

a ploy to discover your vunrability to running out of power before I run out of ideas. you were expected to say something like.. oh my battery is near flat... and I would make my move. mm chess do you play Ron?
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

a ploy to discover your vunrability to running out of power before I run out of ideas. you were expected to say something like.. oh my battery is near flat... and I would make my move. mm chess do you play Ron?
alex

Are you really asking, "Do I play well?" or "Do I understand the moves, strategies and have the temperament to be a great player ala Fischer?", or are you just asking because you couldn't think of a better retort to my previous posting that was strictly science based and on topic

[Sonia]

The short answer to the question is yes -- it is indeed extremely unlikely that two complex snowflakes will look exactly alike. It's so extremely unlikely, in fact, that even if you looked at every one ever made you would not find any exact duplicates.
The long answer is a bit more involved -- it depends on just what you mean by "alike," and on just what you mean by "snowflake." Let's look at the possibilities....

Small snow crystals can look alike. Now let's relax our definition of alikeness, and say that two snow crystals are alike if they just look alike in an optical microscope (the smallest features one can see in an optical microscope are about one micrometer in size, which is about 10000 times larger than an atom). In this case things are very different. One can find simple hexagonal prisms falling from the sky, and one can certainly make such simple crystals in the lab. The picture here shows two such crystals grown using the free-fall method (see Free-falling Snow).
Crystals with simple shapes often look similar to one another, and it's not hard to imagine that if you sifted through a reasonable number of Antarctic snow crystals you would find two that were essentially indistinguishable in a microscope. Since simple crystals are very common (one doesn't notice them much because they're small), it's fair to say that there are a great many natural snow crystals that look pretty much alike.
But that's only for simple hexagonal prisms. What about more complex stellar crystals?

Larger, complex snowflakes are all different. The number of possible ways of making a complex snowflake is staggeringly large. To see just how much so, consider a simpler question -- how many ways can you arrange 15 books on your bookshelf? Well, there's 15 choices for the first book, 14 for the second, 13 for the third, etc. Multiply it out and there are over a trillion ways to arrange just 15 books. With a hundred books, the number of possible arrangements goes up to just under 10158 (that's a 1 followed by 158 zeros). That number is about 1070 times larger than the total number of atoms in the entire universe!
Now when you look at a complex snow crystal, you can often pick out a hundred separate features if you look closely. Since all those features could have grown differently, or ended up in slightly different places, the math is similar to that with the books. Thus the number of ways to make a complex snow crystal is absolutely huge.
And thus it's unlikely that any two complex snow crystals, out of all those made over the entire history of the planet, have ever looked completely alike.

[xelasnave]

mmm only unlikey eh.
Sonia that was a fantastic post and the links so informative I love it .
Great stuff .
I am going back to read more .
alex

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by tailwag

Are you really asking, "Do I play well?" or "Do I understand the moves, strategies and have the temperament to be a great player ala Fischer?", or are you just asking because you couldn't think of a better retort to my previous posting that was strictly science based and on topic

why yes Ron thats exactly what I was asking
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Sonia, you made it all up - where is your empirical evidence
(Kidding, kidding, it's an Aussie thing )

[xelasnave]

Sonia wins by a knockout in the 54th round .
alex

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Sonia wins by a knockout in the 54th round .
alex

Yes but