Hexagon facts for kids

A hexagon is a polygon with 6 sides and 6 corners (vertices). Like regular triangles and squares, hexagons fit together without gaps, which are known as tesselations. They therefore are often used for tiling floors. They are also quite common in nature. The honeycombs in beehives are hexagons, for example.

Click the image for a step-by-step animation of the construction of a regular hexagon using compass and straightedge, given by Euclid's Elements, Book IV, Proposition 15: this is possible as 6 2 × 3, a product of a power of two and distinct Fermat primes.		When the side length AB is given, then you draw around the point A and around the point B a circular arc. The intersection M is the center of the circumscribed circle. Transfer the line segment AB four times on the circumscribed circle and connect the corner points.

Hexagons: in nature and by humankind

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  A beehive honeycomb

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  The scutes of a turtle's carapace

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  North polar hexagonal cloud feature on Saturn, discovered by Voyager 1 and confirmed in 2006 by Cassini

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  Micrograph of a snowflake

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  Hexagonal floor tesselations (in Rome)

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  A regular hexagon, with all sides the same length and all vertices the same angle.

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  Naturally formed basalt columns from Giant's Causeway in Ireland; large masses must cool slowly to form a polygonal fracture pattern

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  An aerial view of Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park

Related pages

• Polygon
• Triangle
• Square
• Pentagon
• Octagon

Images for kids

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  Giant's Causeway closeup

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  A regular skew hexagon seen as edges (black) of a triangular antiprism, symmetry D3d, [2+,6], (2*3), order 12.

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  The ideal crystalline structure of graphene is a hexagonal grid.

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  Assembled E-ELT mirror segments

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  Saturn's hexagon, a hexagonal cloud pattern around the north pole of the planet

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  Benzene, the simplest aromatic compound with hexagonal shape.

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  Crystal structure of a molecular hexagon composed of hexagonal aromatic rings.

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  The James Webb Space Telescope mirror is composed of 18 hexagonal segments.

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  Metropolitan France has a vaguely hexagonal shape. In French, l'Hexagone refers to the European mainland of France.

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  Hexagonal Hanksite crystal, one of many hexagonal crystal system minerals

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  Hexagonal barn

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  The Hexagon, a hexagonal theatre in Reading, Berkshire

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  Władysław Gliński's hexagonal chess

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  Pavilion in the Taiwan Botanical Gardens

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  Hexagonal window

See also

In Spanish: Hexágono para niños