Sometimes called “nature’s perfect shape,” hexagons can also be seen in beehives, flowers, snowflakes, and turtle shells. Tessellation ensures that there’s neither wasted space nor wasted energy. Hexagons, which are themselves composed of tessellated triangles, do. Triangles and squares tessellate circles and pentagons do not.

Some shapes tessellate, meaning they can be repeated across a surface without leaving gaps or overlapping. In this case the hexagonal geometry is adopted because all of the carbons are sp2 hybridized. In the case of carbon, the only molecule that adopts a perfect hexagonal geometry in its ground state is benzene (and its derivatives that possess a 6-fold rotational axis). It is all about minimizing the energy of a molecule.

Hexagonal packing also minimises the perimeter for a given area because of its 120-degree angles. Mathematically, the hexagon has 6 sides – what makes this particular shape so interesting is that the hexagonal shape best fills a plane with equal size units and leaves no wasted space. The six bonded carbon atoms form a perfect hexagon also called a benzene ring. When six carbon atoms bond, the angle is 120 degrees - which should already be familiar by now. Why does organic chemistry have hexagons?Īs any chemistry student will be quick to point out, hexagons are the basis of organic chemistry. The top and bottom layers (a) contain six atoms at the corners of a hexagon and one atom at the center of each hexagon. In a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) arrangement of atoms, the unit cell consists of three layers of atoms. What are the hexagonal structures in chemistry?

The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°.

In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek ἕξ, hex, meaning “six”, and γωνία, gonía, meaning “corner, angle”) is a six-sided polygon or 6-gon. 24 Is hexagon a lucky shape? What does hexagon mean in science?

Perfect hexagon