Honeycomb

Aug 12, 2020 | Hinsdale

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear "honeycomb" might be the breakfast cereal of the same name, but it is also math terminology!

In mathematics, a "honeycomb" is another way of explaing that a series of shapes can tessellate a plane. This means that a shape can "cover (a plane surface) by repeated use of a single shape, without gaps or overlapping."

MathWolrd gives us this example:

HoneycombTessellation

There are actually a few other ways a shape can tessellate a plane, which we discussed in an earlier post. These exmaples also come to us from MathWorld:

RegularTessellations

SemiregularTessellations

DemiregularTessellations

Can you think of some examples of where you've seen some tessellations?