Hexagons: a shape that everyone knows, but few know how cool they really are. To emphasize how incredible these shapes are, we must look at the wise words of the YouTube channel CGP Grey. In this video, it makes two incredible points, bees and tiling. Bees are a truly incredible animal that has mastered engineering for making beehives. These are complex, wonderful structures that are marvels of engineering.
To see why, we must look at tiling, take any shape, say the wonderful triangle. Triangles are great because of their strength in building things that need to hold a lot of weight, like bridges or big buildings. Take these triangles and fit them right side by side to fill in a specific surface area. Not easy right? And when you do get it, It takes a decent amount of lines and space, and the best way is that the shape just divides into itself infinitely. and it doesn’t really work out too well. Now try the same thing with hexagons. It works beautifully. However, let’s look back at those triangles and… they form hexagons when tiled together! Try it yourself and you’ll see!
The whole point to all of this for bees is creating the maximum area for the least amount of honey. Hence where the hexagon comes in! However, hexagons aren’t only found through our friend the bee, but also in outer space! Where, you may ask? Well fret not dear reader, for you have asked the right place! Saturn is the answer that you seek! Simply search up the great hexagon of Saturn! It is a formation of the gasses of Saturn that remains a mystery as to why it’s even there! Now, the giant gaseous Saturn isn’t the only thing that shows a hexagonal shape, we can also look at the very small. The snowflake is a six-sided thing, all because at its molecular level all the molecules form together in a pattern of hexagons! This also adds to almost all ice on earth as ice 1h is made of a similar molecular pattern (except 1c, we don’t talk about the square ice). (Or ice-9, we just don’t talk about that one at all.) A lot of other molecules use the hexagonal shape too! If you do a little research you’ll see a world of hexagons at the molecular level. Hexagons are like this because of their strength, they are composed of a bunch of 120 degree angles which is an incredibly strong orientation for lines. Honeycomb paneling is something you can make by sandwiching packed hexagons and a flat sheet that is incredibly tear-resistant and flexible. All of these are the reasons why hexagons are truly the bestagons. If this article hasn’t convinced you, go watch the video by CGP Grey with all of this information told through fun animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOifuHs6eY.