Snowflakes and honeybees
Snowflakes are a beautiful sight as they come out of the sky on a gray
winter clay. But they are even more beautiful when you see them close up
through a microscope. Then they look like the work of an artist. You can
see that each snowflake has a lovely, lacy design.
Although snowflakes have many different designs, the shape of every
snowflake is the same. It is always a shape with six sides—a shape
called a hexagon [(hehk]{.smallcaps} suh gahn).
The hexagon of a snowflake is made of six equilateral, or equal-sided,
triangles. Lots of things around us have the shape of a hexagon. Most
insects have eyes that are made up of a great many tiny hexagons.
Honeybees make their honeycombs, or storage chambers for honey, in the
shape of hexagons. Some wasps and other insects also make hexagon-shaped
storage chambers in their nests. And this is really the very best shape
these insects could use, because hexagons fit together perfectly.
In fact, there are only a few shapes, such as triangles, squares, and
hexagons, that will fit together perfectly on all sides. If you want to
cover a tabletop with tiles, you can do it using- triangles, squares, or
hexagons of the same size. But you couldn’t do it with pentagons,
octagons, or most other shapes. There would be gaps between the tiles.
(top) Bees make compartments shaped like hexagons to store their honey.
The hexagons fit together perfectly, forming what we call a honeycomb,
(above and right) The hexagon shape of each of these snowflakes can be
seen through a microscope.
