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Introduction: The driving question of this project was: Why do bees use hexagonal prisms for their hives instead of other geometric shapes? We found the answer to this question by making our own "experiment" type of project where we found out how many of each shape with the same base would fit on the same sized area.

Materials: For this project we used the folding geometric shapes, although we did not use all of the shapes we did use the square pyramid, cube, cylinder and of course the hexagonal prism. Those are the only shapes we used for this particular experiment.(provided by HSD)We also used basic materials such as rulers and calculators to find the volume of our shapes.

Procedures: The first thing we did with the shapes is find the area of the bases of the three shapes. All of the bases were equal which is what we were looking for. After that we tried to fit as many of these shapes on a 9x9 inch paper and we learned how many of each shape fit. Then we found the volume of one of the however many fit on the 9x9 inch paper and multiplied by the amount that fit there. That is how we got our information that was used in the video.

Essential Understanding and Safety/Principle: What we learned from this project is that bees use hexagons because they provide the most volume while using the least amount of space. The reason for this is because hexagons fit within one another like puzzle pieces and do not waste any space. We learned that bees have adapted and use geometry in their lives to help them get the most out of what they do. We confirmed that through our project, only four of each shape fit even though all of these shapes had the same area, however 7 of the hexagons fit which is almost twice as much as every shape and twice as much area that those hexagons. This proved to us that bees have a reason behind their choice of shapes with an "experiment" to prove it.

There were no hazards associated with this experiment since we were just working with plastic materials that were safe even for elementary students (age 2+).