# Is popcorn like snowflakes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 14, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025 "2011-07-14T16:39:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Random\_Design](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/58f4c7/32.png) [@Random\_Design](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Random_Design)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/1 "2011-07-14T16:39:07Z")
Is popped corn unique like snowflakes or are there a finite number of forms? ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/2 "2011-07-14T16:44:17Z")
Unless I am mistaken (and someone will shortly come along who is smarter than me) there is not an infinite variety in snowflakes. Due to the size of snowflakes and ice crystals, there are only so many configurations possible. Popcorn, I would guess would have a near infinite variety. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/3 "2011-07-14T17:04:20Z")
In both cases, there is only a finite number of possible forms, but that finite number is so insanely ridiculously ludicrously combinatorically huge that you might as well call it infinite. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/4 "2011-07-14T17:08:16Z")
has anyone cataloged popcorn kernels as snow flakes have been cataloged? ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/5 "2011-07-14T17:10:14Z")
When I said that someone smarter than me would come along, I didn’t know it would be someone THAT much smarter. Yeah, I guess there are also only so many ways to arrange ‘popcorn’ molecules, too. Is it true that in a significant snowflall there are actually thousands of identical snowflakes? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/6 "2011-07-14T17:15:16Z")
The number of snowflakes in a snowfall is only, at most, astronomically huge. That’s far short of insanely ridiculously ludicrously combinatorically huge. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/7 "2011-07-14T17:18:31Z")
Ah, so I was 4 words-that-end-in-ly orders of magnitude off. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/8 "2011-07-14T17:28:43Z")
No. Snowflakes dissolve if you put either salt or melted butter on them. Popcorn is therefore superior. ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/9 "2011-07-14T17:35:46Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > has anyone cataloged popcorn kernels as snow flakes have been cataloged? The two main types of popped kernels (called, coincidentally, “flakes”) are [butterfly and mushroom.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn) Don’t know if anyone has taken it beyond that. ---
**Author:** ![JBDivmstr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@JBDivmstr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBDivmstr)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/10 "2011-07-15T06:18:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In both cases, there is only a finite number of possible forms, but that finite number is so insanely ridiculously ludicrously combinatorically huge that you might as well call it infinite. Personally, I rather liked the “insanely, combinatorically huge” part, of that statement. 😃 But the “ridiculously, ludicrously” part, sounded… I dunno… redundant? Just sayin’…😉 ---
**Author:** ![JBDivmstr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@JBDivmstr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBDivmstr)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/11 "2011-07-15T06:22:36Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > Ah, so I was 4 words-that-end-in-ly orders of magnitude off. ROFLMAO! I just love the “snarcasm”, here on the SDMB! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/12 "2011-07-15T08:51:01Z")
To give some numbers about the snowflakes, some physicist somewhere apparently claims that the total number of possible snowflakes that can be considered different is about 10[SUP]158[/SUP], and that the total number of snowflakes that has ever fallen on the earth is 10[SUP]30[/SUP]. I’m really not sure I buy the 158, but there you go. (If accurate, we can quantify “words-that-end-in-ly orders of magnitude.” Each ly that gets added seems to be about 32 regular orders of magnitude.) ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/13 "2011-07-15T13:01:20Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > To give some numbers about the snowflakes, some physicist somewhere apparently claims that the total number of possible snowflakes that can be considered different is about 10[SUP]158[/SUP], and that the total number of snowflakes that has ever fallen on the earth is 10[SUP]30[/SUP]. I’m really not sure I buy the 158, but there you go. > > (If accurate, we can quantify “words-that-end-in-ly orders of magnitude.” Each ly that gets added seems to be about 32 regular orders of magnitude.) Hm, it’s only fitting that we should be able to indicate a power of -ly simply with a greek letter. Are the are any still available? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/14 "2011-07-15T13:33:27Z")
Been reading Farmer Boy, have you? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/15 "2011-07-15T17:53:59Z")
I’d expect the number of possible snowflakes to be much greater than 10[sup]158[/sup] (that’s merely insanely combinatoric, not ridiculously or ludicrously), but maybe the constraints set by the crystalline structure are enough to get it down that low. Popcorn isn’t crystalline, though, so those limits wouldn’t apply. And I added the extra adverbs because you’re not just taking a combinatoric calculation, but a combinatoric calculation that starts with numbers that are already astronomically large. Nor would I recommend associating a number of orders of magnitude with each adverb, because combinatorics grow too fast for that. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/16 "2011-07-15T18:04:21Z")
Yes, but these are _special_ orders of SUPER-magnitude. And stuff. > [@RadicalPi](#): > > (If accurate, we can quantify “words-that-end-in-ly orders of magnitude.” Each ly that gets added seems to be about 32 regular orders of magnitude.) ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/17 "2011-07-15T20:46:22Z")
> [@JBDivmstr](#): > > ..But the “ridiculously, ludicrously” part, sounded… I dunno… redundant? Just sayin’…😉 I think more repetitively redunadant. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/18 "2011-07-15T23:04:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’d expect the number of possible snowflakes to be much greater than 10[sup]158[/sup] (that’s merely insanely combinatoric, not ridiculously or ludicrously), but maybe the constraints set by the crystalline structure are enough to get it down that low. Popcorn isn’t crystalline, though, so those limits wouldn’t apply. I believe that the cite I was looking at, that I can’t find, was trying to figure out how many different snowflakes there are that would not be considered “close enough” to looking the same as each other. So that lowers the numbers a bit. And even if this is a lower bound, the sheer size of the gap between those that could exist and those that have existed makes it all but impossible that any two are the same. (On the more facetious note, maybe we could take ly orders of magnitude in a different sense, like each additional ly is the square perhaps the previous order of magnitude. Or they could work like factorials in some sense. Or something. I’ve been playing around with the numbers, and they don’t make sense, so I’ll get back to this when I have more time to figuring it out.) ---
**Author:** ![JBDivmstr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@JBDivmstr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBDivmstr)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-popcorn-like-snowflakes/589025/19 "2011-07-16T22:05:41Z")
> [@BMalion](#): > > I think more repetitively redunadant. Perhaps you meant, “redundantly, repetitive”? 😛