The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-15

assuming hat the comb equals its ideal
form, to close up a cell each of the three
rhombs must have its wide angleI beg
your pardon, obtuSe / should have SAID
must have its obtuse angle of such size that
half of 1t has for it's tangent the square
root or 2. That is quite clear to you? Some
day when you are not otherwise employed
you may spend a pleasant afternoon ex-
tracing the square root of 2. l will put 1t
another way. The ~diagonais of each rhomb
must be to each other as the side and the
diagonal of a square. One can imagine the
first bee that landed ciphering out this
problem on the blackboard. thumbing over
Its books of logarithms till it finally set
down: Tan. square root of 2 equals 54 deg.
A min. s Sec multiply that by 2 to get the
whole obtuse angle, 100 deg. Is min. 10 Sec;
subtracting that from $50 deg. to get the
acute angle, which is 20 deg. 81 min. "A Sec,
and then busting the chalk off its clothes
with a happy sigh and hunting up the
SCISSORS to cut out a pattern to mt a hexa-
gon whose diameter is one-fifth of an inch.
But wait. There's more. Maraldi meas
ured the angles Of these rhombS and then
gave the problems to Koenig to solve.
koenig'S calculations for the pyramid that
would most economically end a hexagonal
prism differed from Maraldi's measure
mentS by two minutes of a degree. Worried
about II. he worked until he found a
printers error in his table Of logarithms
that had led him astray by just so much.
Whereupon Lord Brougham threw up his
hands and clucked his establishment that
the hive bee should have solved q most
ItCOnQlte mathematician pTODleIu So dDSO-
lutely that it corrected a standard book of
reference. And how wonderful the bee is,
and what a lesson this should be to US. and
so on and so on.
what nonsensei An error Of two minutes
in a degree! Maraldi was the one that
made it, of course, for that means a di-
vergence so small that two lines forming
this angle would travel IA feet before sep
arating one inch. Listen. The wax in a
comb is as thin as the bees working in 1t
can scrape 1t without making holes in 1t.
lDu N n0nD I.rHhTA A1 a. AAnte IN fhn q ~
it is a globe which has the greatest posi-
BILE content in proportion to its envelope.
Put 1t on a plate and if it doesn't burst the
bottom is fat. Surround it with six other
bubbles. The equal tension Of the meeting
films will make the central bubble a hexa-
gon, just as the equal tension of the thin
wax with the bees working in ii and press
ing against each other makes it a eXagon.
oh, the marvellous geometry of the honey
bee! Oh. the profound mathematics OF
soapsuds,
eyes he would have seen that the outer
cells of the honeycOmb are cylindrical, just
as the outer bubbles of a mass of froth are
globular. Besides, worker-cells and drone
cells are not of the same diameter, to say
nothing of the pear-Shaped queen cells, so
a comb couldn't be fundamentally exact.
Almost every cell in a honeycomb is out Of
a true hexagon by at least three or four
degrees. Falsehood, willful or careless, al
ways degradeS that which ii is intended to
exalt. The bee is something vastly more
W"orsnlplul lhdn an autOLndlon lhdl cues
on mechanically making ~hexagons, world
without end. 1t is a living organism whose
tiniest cell is all instinct with mind, mind
that differs in degree only from that of the
Almighty God himself, in whom we live
and move and have our being. He has
made us all, from the jellyfish to the
philosopher, of one blood for to dwell on
all the face of the earth, and the bee is
like US except that. instead of the indi-
vidual living a long time and learning as he
grows, it is the race that gathers wisdom.
changing form and habit Of existence to fit
environment"