On 28 May 2003 at 8:02, Rick Green wrote:

>  Do you have any more examples to add to my list
> of the special uses of six-sidedness?

   The 200 inch mirror of the telescope at Mount Palomar was cast
before the computer era, by technicians at Corning Glass. The
engineers spent a couple years calculating with their slide rules to
find the perfect shape for maximum strength and rigidity for this
huge glass object, which we all know is not only brittle, but weak
and subject to movement.

    What they came up with was the hexagon for the reinforcement
structure of the back of the mirror. The first cast was cooled too
quickly and cracked, so they had to redo it, and take a year to cool
the castiing, with rigid control of the temperature, so that it just
cooled a couple degrees each day.

   Of course the bees knew all along how to take a weak and fragile
material and maximize its strength by using hexagons. And they
didn't even have slide rules.

Dave  in SC  USA
Thinking they were taught by someone more brilliant than me...

The Pollination Home Page:  http://pollinator.com

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