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The reason patterns often appear in nature is simple: The same basic physical or chemical processes occur in many patterned substances and organisms as they form. Whether in plants and animals or rocks, foams and ice crystals, the intricate patterns that happen in nature come down to what’s happening at the level of atoms and molecules.

Maxim Lavrentovich Assistant Professor Physics PJN #: D-21-41001Maxim Lavrentovich, assistant professor of theoretical biophysics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, explains that a pattern in nature is any regularly repeated arrangement of shapes or colors. Some of the most striking examples include the hexagonal arrays of rocks at Giant’s Causeway in the United Kingdom, the beautiful fractal arrangements of florets on a Romanesco broccoli, and the colorful stripes and spots on tropical fish. Read the full article on The Conversation. This article was translated into Indonesian.

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