Hexagons: The Goldilocks Shape That Powers Nature and Games
About this episode
Why do hexagons show up everywhere from beehives to board games to planetary storms? We unpack the math behind the Honeycomb Theorem, the 0.907 packing density, and how hexagonal tiling minimizes perimeter for equal-area regions. Explore real-world examples—from graphene’s lattice to the Giant’s Causeway and Saturn’s storms—and see why Civ V and Settlers of Catan feel so natural on a hex grid. We’ll also peek at four-dimensional tilings like the 24-cell and what they suggest about order, efficiency, and the geometry underlying our universe.
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