Walk past almost any elementary school window in December and you’ll see them: paper snowflakes with eight arms, or sometimes four. They look festive. They also look nothing like the real thing. Snowflakes in nature are built on a six-sided pattern, and the reason most paper versions aren’t comes down to a single fold.
SnowCrystals.com put’s it pretty bluntly: “you really ought to make them six-sided, like real snowflakes. Real snowflakes are never eight-sided.”
Why real snowflakes have six sides
The six-fold shape starts with the water molecule. As a Science News Explores explainer describes it, each molecule is bent into a wide V, and as water freezes, neighboring molecules line up so their electrical charges pair off. The arrangement that results is a hexagon. “That’s why snowflakes have six sides,” the explainer says. “It stems from the hexagonal — six-sided — structure of most ice crystals.”
The Artful Parent
Family-life ideas and sharp reads, in your inbox.
As a crystal falls through a cloud, it grows outward from that hexagonal core. The six arms grow under nearly identical conditions, which is why they tend to look alike, while changes in temperature and humidity along the way give each flake its own pattern of branches.
Where the eight points come from
The usual classroom method is to fold a square of paper in half, in half again, and then once more corner to corner. Each of those folds halves the angle at the center. A full circle is 360 degrees, so you end up with a 45-degree wedge, and 360 divided by 45 is eight. Cut the wedge, open it up, and you get eight arms.
To get six, you need a 60-degree wedge, or a 30-degree one folded in half for mirror-image arms. Halving alone can’t get you there. The trick is to fold into thirds.
How to fold a six-pointed snowflake
1. Start with a square
Use thin paper. Printer paper works, and tissue or origami paper is easier to cut through many layers. If you only have a rectangular sheet, fold one corner down to meet the opposite edge, crease it, and cut off the leftover strip.
2. Fold it into a triangle
Fold the square in half corner to corner. Turn it so the long folded edge is at the bottom and the point is at the top. Pinch a small crease at the middle of that bottom edge. That spot will become the center of your snowflake.
3. Fold into thirds
Imagine that bottom edge as a straight line with the pinch mark at its center. Fold the right corner up and over so the new fold starts at the pinch mark and covers roughly a third of the triangle. Then fold the left corner over on top of it. Slide the two layers until the edges line up neatly and nothing sticks out. You’ve divided 180 degrees into three 60-degree sections.
4. Fold in half once more
Fold the narrow cone in half lengthwise, keeping its tip, the pinched center from step 2, at the bottom. This gives you a 30-degree wedge, and it means each arm will come out with matching left and right sides, the way real snowflake arms do.i
5. Trim and cut
Cut straight across the top to remove the uneven tails. Then cut small shapes along both edges.Remember that the bottom point is the center of the finished flake, so a cut there opens up the middle.
6. Unfold carefully
Open it slowly, especially with thin paper. You should have six arms instead of eight.
Tips for better results
Many layers of paper are hard to cut, so short, sharp scissors help, and younger children may do better with thinner paper and an adult holding the folded wedge. If your thirds come out uneven, the snowflake will still work. It will just look like a slightly lopsided real one!