
Math
Bees and wasps devised the same clever math trick to build nests
During nest building, these insects add five- and seven-sided cells in pairs. This helps their colony fit together hexagonal cells of different sizes.
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During nest building, these insects add five- and seven-sided cells in pairs. This helps their colony fit together hexagonal cells of different sizes.
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A parabola is a U-shaped curve, where every point along that curve is the same distance from another point and a line.
Ellipse describes the shapes of planetary orbits around their stars and explains the wacky acoustic phenomenon of “whispering chambers.”
The shapes can form an infinite tiled pattern that never repeats. The first is a 13-sided shape nicknamed “the hat.”
Möbius strips may be easy to make, but they have some pretty mind-bending properties.
Altitude is used to describe heights in geography, astronomy and math.
It’s not fast, but jumping beans use randomness to maximize their chances of getting out of the sun’s heat.
Calculus is math that deals with curves, from their changing slopes to the areas they enclose.
The metric system just got its first update in 30 years. New prefixes will help scientists interpret the biggest — and smallest — numbers.
Mean, median and mode are all different ways to describe the middle value in a dataset.