On 6

Image from sportsclipart.com

Six (6) is one of those numbers that we can associate with many things, so I didn’t intend to capture everything about it. Nonetheless, it’s a special number that I honor in this post, so feel free to add additional factoids about 6.

In Mathematics

• 6 is a composite number, perfect number, Granville number, congruent number, discrete biprime number, unitary perfect number, harmonic divisor number, all-Harshad number, octahedral number, triangular number, and a superior highly composite number
• 6 is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number
• 6 has proper divisors (1, 2 and 3) … and is divisible by itself
• 6 equals the sum and the product of its proper divisors, which are three consecutive positive numbers (1, 2, 3)
• A 6-sided polygon is a hexagon (including a cube) , but not all hexagons are a cube
• There are 6 basic trigonometric functions
• In base 6, 10 is the equivalent of 6
• 6 squared is 36, but 6 to the 6th power is 46656, yet the square root of 6 is 2.44948974278

In Science

• A neutral atom of carbon contains 6 protons and 6 electrons
• The cells of a beehive are 6-sided
  

  Benzene Ring

• Insects have 6 legs
• A benzene molecule has a ring of 6 carbon atoms
• Snowflakes have six-fold symmetry
• A hexamer is an oligomer made of six subunits
• Messier object M6 is in the constellation Scorpius, and is also known as the Butterfly Cluster
• The New General Catalogue object (NGC 6) a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda
• There are 6 types of quarks and 6 types of leptons in particle physics
• The six-vertex model has 6 possible configurations of arrows at each vertex
• There are six phases in pandemic influenza
• Human Chromosome 6 has over 170 million base pairs and is associated with epilepsy, Parkinson disease, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome

In Musical Instruments

• A standard guitar has 6 strings
• Most woodwind instruments have 6 basic holes or keys
• There are 6 semitones in a tritone

In Entertainment

• Take 6 is a Grammy Award winning Christian vocal jazz group
• Les Six (“The Six” in English) was a group consisting of the French composers Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, FrancisPoulencandGermaineTailleferre in the 1920s
  

  Image from vector-images.com

• Bands with the number 6/six in their name include Six Organs of Admittance, 6 O’clock Saints, Electric Six, Eve 6, Los Xey (seiis Basque for “six”), Out On Blue Six, Six In Six, Sixpence None the Richer, Slant 6, Vanity 6, and You Me At Six
• #6 is the pseudonym of American musician Shawn Crahan, when performing with the band Slipknot
• Six geese a-laying were given as a present on the sixth day in the popular Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
• Johann Pachelbel’ composed Hexachordum Apollinis into 6 arias
• Beethoven, Bruckner, Haydn, Mahler, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and probably others composed notable Sixth Symphonies
• Six Pack is a ZZ Top album
• Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence, the sixth album by Dream Theater, includes six songs with the sixth song tells the stories of six individuals suffering from various mental illnesses
• Bionic Six is an animated series that lasted 2 years (65 episodes)
• Number 6 is a character in the movie I Am Number Four
• Films include Six Pack is a 1982 comedy drama, Six-Pack a 2000 thrilled, and Sixpack a 2011 Finnish comedy

In Religion

• 6 Points on a Star of David
  

  Interfaith graphic by Justice St. Rain (Bahá’í Community) of Interfaith Resources

• 6 Orders of the Mishnah
• 6 Symbolic foods placed on the Passover Seder Plate
• Yahweh took 6 days to create the world in the Old Testament Book of Genesis; humankind was created on day 6
• The Jewish holiday of Shavuot starts on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan
• The Six Articles of Belief (Islam)
• Fasting six days of Shawwal (Islam)
• A trasarenu is the combination of 6 celestial paramānus (atoms) (Hinduism)

In Language and Culture

• Other words for six include VI (Roman numerals), zes (Dutch), sei (Italian), seks (Norwegian), shesh (Hebrew), kuusi (Finnish), sita (Swahili), anim (Filipino)
• Hexa is classical Greek for “six”, thus terms as hexagon, hexahedron, hex nut
• The prefix hexa- also occurs in the systematic name of many chemical compounds, such as “hexamethyl”
  “Hexadecimal” combines hexa- with the Latinate decimal to name a number base of 16
• Hexameter is a poetic form consisting of 6 feet per line
• Sex- is a Latin prefix meaning “six”. Thus: sextet, sextuplets, sexdactyly (6 fingers), sextant (whose shape forms one-sixth of a circle)
• Senary is the adjective meaning “sixth”
• 6 is a lucky number in Chinese culture
• No more than 6 degrees of separation between any two people
• There are 6 tastes in traditional Indian Medicine called Ayurveda: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent
• Coffins are buried 6 feet below ground, thus 6 feet under

In History

• The Six Dynasties form part of Chinese history
• The Birmingham Six were held in prison for 16 years
• 6 facts about the sixth day of the sixth month (June 6th): D-Day (WW II), RFK assassination, National Day of Sweden, Orwell’s 1984 first published, first drive-in theater opened in the US, Queensland established
  Augustus ruled the Roman Empire during both 6 BC and 6 CE
• In the ancient Roman calendar, Sextilis was the sixth month, but after the Julian reform, June became the sixth month and Sextilis was renamed August
• Sextidi was the sixth day of the decade in the French Revolutionary calendar

In Sports

• The National Basketball Association has 6 divisions
• The National Hockey League started with 6 teams
  

  From allfreevectors.com

• Smaller high schools play 6-man football (not the traditional 11-man)
• In soccer, the number of substitutes combined by both teams, that are allowed in the game
• Volleyball and ice hockey play with 6 players on each side
• A team earns 6 points for a touchdown American and Canadian football
• Australian Rules football teams earn six points for a goal
• In cricket, team scores 6 runs when the shot a “six/sixer” when the ball clears the boundary without bouncing
• In NASCAR, driven by 37 different drivers in 322 races, but only Cale Yarborough drove #6 into the winner’s circle (and only once)
• Tour de France has 6 mountain stages
• Retired #6 sports jerseys
  • MLB: Bobby Cox, Steve Garvey, Al Kaline, Stan Musial, Tony Oliva, Johnny Pesky, Joe Torre
  • NFL: None
  • NBA: Walter Davis, Julius Irving, Avery Johnson, Bill Russell, and Orlando Magic and Sacramento Kings fans
  • NHL: Ace Bailey

In Technology

• On most phones, letter M, N, O are found on the 6 key
• The “6-meter band” in amateur radio includes the frequencies from 50 to 54 MHz
• 6 is the resin identification code used in recycling to identify polystyrene
• Perl 6 is a programming language

Miscellaneous

• “Six” is used as an informal slang term for the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6
• Six Flags amusement parks and theme park
• Trivial Pursuit games have 6 categories
• The highest number on one end of a standard domino
  

  A Golomb Ruler from Wikipedia

• Odds of rolling a 6 drastically changes with the number of dice: (1) 1 of 6 (16.7%) , (2) 5 of 36 (13.9%), and (3) 10 of 216 (4.6%)
• A Golomb ruler of length 6 is a “perfect ruler”
• The Six Restaurant (Los Angeles)
• Six Sigma is a statistical modeling process aimed at quality improvement
• International maritime signal flag for 6
• 6 Cardinal Directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down
• 6 years is the standard term for a United States senator
• 6-pack is a common form of packaging for 6 bottles or cans of drink, number of fundamental flight instruments lumped together on a cockpit display, other assemblages of six items, defined abdominal muscles (rectus abdominis, external and internal obliques, & transverse abdominis), getting hit in the face by a spiked volleyball
• 6 is a common reference to car engines, such as straight 6, line-in 6, slant 6, and flat 6
• A Braille cell is based on 6 dots
• Mario must collect 6 Royal Stickers in the Nintendo 3DS game Paper Mario: Sticker Star
• Extra-sensory perception is sometimes called the “sixth sense”, which was also a 1999 movie featuring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment

The Occasion
I’ve interrupted the Pause button for an important announcement. A mere 6 years ago. A Frank Angle started August 28, 2008. To anyone who has ever visited my little corner of the world, thank you. To those who take to time to comment, many more thanks. To those who regularly return, I’m forever grateful. So get a drink of choice (alcoholic or nonalcoholic), enjoy same snacks, leave a song (if you desire), add a factoid, tell your friends to visit, and most importantly …  mingle with others …. and I hope you return on September 1st.

Coincidentally … and yes … coincidentally … August 28th is the birthday of the reason for my prosthetic hand.