Hexagon - Regular Hexagon

Regular Hexagon

A regular hexagon has all sides of the same length, and all internal angles are 120 degrees. A regular hexagon has 6 rotational symmetries (rotational symmetry of order six) and 6 reflection symmetries (six lines of symmetry), making up the dihedral group D₆. The longest diagonals of a regular hexagon, connecting diametrically opposite vertices, are twice the length of one side. From this it can be seen that a triangle with a vertex at the center of the regular hexagon and sharing one side with the hexagon is equilateral, and that the regular hexagon can be partitioned into six equilateral triangles.

Like squares and equilateral triangles, regular hexagons fit together without any gaps to tile the plane (three hexagons meeting at every vertex), and so are useful for constructing tessellations. The cells of a beehive honeycomb are hexagonal for this reason and because the shape makes efficient use of space and building materials. The Voronoi diagram of a regular triangular lattice is the honeycomb tessellation of hexagons. It is not usually considered a triambus, although it is equilateral.

The area of a regular hexagon of side length t is given by

An alternative formula for area is A = 1.5dt where the length d is the distance between the parallel sides (also referred to as the flat-to-flat distance), or the height of the hexagon when it sits on one side as base, or the diameter of the inscribed circle.

Another alternative formula for the area if only the flat-to-flat distance, d, is known, is given by

The area can also be found by the formulas and, where a is the apothem and p is the perimeter.

The perimeter of a regular hexagon of side length t is 6t, its maximal diameter 2t, and its minimal diameter .

If a regular hexagon has successive vertices A, B, C, D, E, F and if P is any point on the circumscribing circle between B and C, then PE + PF = PA + PB + PC + PD.