How can water molecules in a snowflake influence other molecules positioned thousands of molecules away to form the same macroscopic shape and create a six-pointed design?
• They cannot. There is no spooky power at work here. Ice forms into hexagonal crystals because of the sixfold symmetry of the crystal lattice it forms at or below freezing at a pressure of 1 atmosphere (a number of other ices form at extreme pressures that dance to different lattice tunes).
The crystal itself does not care about the water molecule far away. It is concerned only with the one that might fit a gap in its lattice, which is how crystals grow. If the molecule is moving too fast, it will not settle into the gap. It is much like the ball on the roulette wheel that bounces here and there until it has lost enough energy to be unable to escape ...
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