But Croll stresses that there are multiple ways to create structures in nature, even things that at first glance don’t look like they’ll be good for patterns at all. An example is a type of ...

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 ...

A rare and bewildering intermediate between crystal and glass can be the most stable arrangement for some combinations of ...

His beautiful coffee table book, Patterns in Nature: Why The Natural World Looks The Way It Does (University of Chicago Press, 2017), takes a fascinating and in-depth look into why and how natural ...