How many sides does a hexagon have?

Hexagon comes from the Greek hex, six, and gonia, angle, and the whole family of polygon names works the same way once you know the roots: penta five, hepta seven, octa eight, deca ten. A regular hexagon, with all sides and angles equal, has interior angles of 120 degrees, and that single number explains why the shape turns up so often in nature. Three of those angles meet exactly at a point, so hexagons tile a flat surface with no gaps and no overlap. Only triangles, squares and hexagons manage that, and of the three the hexagon encloses the most area for the least perimeter, which is why honeybees build hexagonal cells and use less wax doing it. The same geometry shapes the cooling cracks in basalt columns and the cell pattern in soap foam, both of which settle into six-sided arrangements because that layout minimises the boundary between neighbours.

Snowflakes grow six arms because water molecules bond at angles that build a hexagonal ice lattice.