GENERATIONS Defined

• Greatest Generation: pre-1928.
• Traditionalists/ Silent Generation: 1928 – 1946.
• Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964.
• Gen X: 1965 – 1976.
• Gen Y / Millennials: 1977 – 1995.
• Gen Z / iGen / Centennials 1995 – 2010.

By the numbers

• Baby Boomers: born 1946 to 1964.
• Generation Jones: born 1955 to 1965.
• Generation X: born 1965 to 1980.
• Xennials: born 1977 to 1983.
• Millennials: born 1981 to 1996.
• Generation Z: born 1997 or after.
• Generation Alpha: born 2010 or after.

Word forms: age groups. countable noun. An age group is the people in a place or organization who were born during a particular period of time, for example, all the people aged between 18 and 25. a style that would appeal to all age groups.

Gen Y: Gen Y, or Millennials, were born between 1981 and 1994/6. They are currently between 25 and 40 years old (72.1 million in the U.S.)

Generation Z

A person between 20 and 29 is called a vicenarian. A person between 30 and 39 is called a tricenarian. A person between 40 and 49 is called a quadragenarian. A person between 50 and 59 is called a quinquagenarian.

A Millennial is anyone born between 1980 and 1995. In the U.S., there are roughly 80 million Millennials. A member of Gen Z is anyone born between 1996 and the early-mid 2000s (end date can vary depending on source). In the U.S., there are approximately 90 million members of Gen Z, or “Gen Zers.”

The term “snowflake generation” was one of Collins English Dictionary’s 2016 words of the year. Collins defines the term as “the young adults of the 2010s (born from 1980-1994), viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations”.

Essentially, calling someone a snowflake is meant to imply that that person is too delicate to handle “valid” criticism and considers themselves to be special and unique — like a snowflake! There are even people who use the snowflake emoji in their social media profiles as a way to proudly claim their snowflake-dom.

On Wiktionary, Special Snowflake Syndrome is defined as, (derogatory) The conviction that one (or often, one’s child) is, in some way, special and should therefore be treated differently than others. The two primary characteristics of the Snowflake are intolerance and entitlement.

All snowflakes contain six sides or points owing to the way in which they form. The molecules in ice crystals join to one another in a hexagonal structure, an arrangement which allows water molecules – each with one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms – to form together in the most efficient way.

Advertisement. Snowflakes come in all shapes and sizes. Large ones can makes the outdoors look like a snow globe, while tiny ones can be so fine that you might have to squint to see them. The difference in size comes down to how cold the temperatures are when it’s snowing.

This system defines the seven principal snow crystal types as plates, stellar crystals, columns, needles, spatial dendrites, capped columns, and irregular forms.

A bit of snowflake watching may turn up some 12-sided snowflakes, as these occur along with the normal 6-sided variety. They’re not real common, but you can spot them if you look. Some snowfalls bring quite a few twelve-siders, although no one really knows what weather conditions are best for making them.

The more detailed explanation is this: The ice crystals that make up snowflakes are symmetrical (or patterned) because they reflect the internal order of the crystal’s water molecules as they arrange themselves in predetermined spaces (known as “crystallization”) to form a six-sided snowflake.

Actually, water molecules occasionally form ice crystals with three or 12 sides — either half or double the usual number — but never five or eight.

Why Are Snowflakes That Particular Shape? Snowflakes commonly display a hexagonal shape; in other words, they form based on six-fold radial symmetry. The reason for this can be assumed to be from the fact that the crystalline structure of ice is also six-fold.

At just below freezing temperature (0 C) a snowflake might look like a tiny plate, while a few degrees colder sees snowflakes that are shaped like columns or needles. The classic star-shaped snowflake makes an appearance around -15 Celsius. Whatever the shape though, snowflakes usually have six sides.

“These perfectly symmetric, six-sided snowflakes, while beautiful, are exceedingly rare – perhaps one-in-a-thousand at the most,” says Garrett. NASA and the U.S. Army helped fund development of the camera, and the National Science Foundation funded the observations.

The scientific consensus states that the likelihood of two large snow crystals being identical is zero. The probability that two snow crystals (a single ice crystal) or flakes (a snow crystal or multiple snow crystals stuck together) will be exactly alike in molecular structure and in appearance, is very minute.

The higher the humidity, the faster the crystals grow.” So as the snowflakes fall from the cloud to the ground, the crystals continue to grow. All these variables — humidity, temperature, path, speed — are also the reason that no two snowflakes are exactly alike.

Since Earth has been around approximately 4.5 billion years, there are right around 10^34 snowflakes that have fallen in the history of planet Earth.

35 Different

Temperature and the amount of moisture in the air determine a snowflake’s basic shape.

hexagonal

Guinness World Records lists a snowflake 15 inches in diameter and 8 inches thick as measured at Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887, as the largest.

In 1885, a man named Wilson A. Bentley attached a microscope to his camera and took what the Smithsonian considers the first image of a single snowflake. About eight years later, Bentley sent some 500 snowflake prints to the institution.

Montana

Given the average falling speed of 3.5 feet per second, a snowflake would take about 45 minutes to an hour to fall and reach the ground, so there is lots of time for the snowflake to grow as it descends. It has been estimated that about 1 septillion snowflakes fall from the sky during an average winter.