voronoi honeycombs

*[ Category - Patterns ] [ Category - Math ] *

Here's one of my favourite reddit posts. A user is asking about a honeycomb structure in his coconut oil after an earthquake:

The top answer pointed that this is because the heat and friction created contraction and the points start contracting, and that this has been observed as a geographical phenomena:

So we have a connection! But wait, there's more, not only is this honeycomb structure observed in various places on various scales, it also has basis in maths. The Voronoi diagram is the most efficient area-division among a set of points. These absolutely beautiful diagrams slice places and create psychedelic math-art:

So this curiosity ended up appearing in a bunch of different locations. So we can kind of feel there's a Voronoi diagram-ness in the natural structure of things, left to themselves, to uniformly maximize efficiency and strength. There's maybe something about hexagons.

It feels like a good example of abstraction.