Patterns in Nature, editorial design project by our 2nd-year student Ellen Andersin.

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The masters of hexagons, apart from physics of
course, are the bees with their honeycomb (1,2). They
demonstrate precious engineering in their array
of prism-shaped cells with a perfectly hexagonal
cross-section. Yet this structure is made without
any blueprint; by simultaneously working bees,
somehow managing to be coordinated. The wax
walls are made with precise thickness and they even
manage to avoid mismatched cells somehow.
The other question is; why hexagons? Because of
geometry. If you want to pack cells together that are
all identical in shape and size, so that they fill a flat
surface, only three regular shapes work. They all have
identical sides and angles and it is either equilateral
triangles, squares or hexagons. Out of these three, the
hexagons require the least amount of wall compared
to the others of the same area. The bees make their
walls from wax which require energy to produce, so
the hexagons are the most economic choice (5).
Foams (4) are even more concerned about economy
than bees. The soap bubbles are made of water with
a skin of soap molecules and the surface tension is
constantly pulling towards a structure that holds the least
amount of soap-film wall, meaning the smallest liquid
surface area as possible. At the same time the structure
has to be mechanically stable and this is part of the
reason why you for instance never see square bubbles; if
four bubbles would be surrounded and pressed by four
walls, they instantly rearrange into three-wall junctions.
This is rooted in the dominant preferences of science.
The eyes of insects (3), with their many light-sensitive
cells are packed hexagonally, like the foams, with only
three cell walls meeting at each vertex.
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Bubbles & Foam