Hexagon 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 maximal diameter (which corresponds to the long diagonal of the hexagon), "D", is twice the maximal radius
Magic hexagon gave a less intricate constructive proof. The order-3 magic hexagon has been published many times as a 'new' discovery. An early reference, and possibly the first discoverer, is Ernst von Haselberg (1887). The numbers in the hexagon are consecutive, and run from 1 to formula_1. Hence their sum is a triangular number, namely There are "r" = (2"n" − 1) rows running along any given direction (E-W, NE-SW, or NW-SE). Each of these rows sum up to the same number "M". Therefore: This can be rewritten as Multiplying throughout by 32 gives which shows that formula_6 must be an integer,