10/8/2023 0 Comments Hexagon nature's perfect shape![]() Want to learn more about hexagons? Here’s a website devoted entirely to the geometry of hexagons! Or, watch this snippet about bees and their hexagonal honeycombs from the BBC. It remained a conjecture until 1999 when a mathematician named Thomas Hales finally proved it! You can read a summary of his proof here. ![]() Thousands of years ago, an ancient Roman scholar named Marcus Terrentius Varro conjectured that the hexagon is the shape that most efficiently breaks flat space up into little units – making honeycombs that hold the most amount of honey while using the least amount of wax. NPR’s Robert Krulwich wrote about this in a recent post on his excellent science blog, Krulwich Wonders. I think the explanation is an amazing example of how the natural world often follows mathematical rules perfectly. Each little cell is a perfect hexagon – and all bees build this way. ![]() People can be skeptical when some mathematicians and scientists talk about mathematics as the “mysterious code” that “underpins the world.” I mean, the natural world is so chaotic! But then you run across this:
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