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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Fact of the Day for October 12, 1999
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Why do most pencils have six flat sides?
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Most pencils have six sides. If you cut one across and look at the
end, it is shaped like a hexagon. There are three reasons for this.
First, it is cheaper to make pencils with six sides because more
pencils can be made from the same amount of wood. The wood that
could make eight round pencils can be made into nine hexagonal ones.
Two other reasons for hexagonal pencils: They are less likely to
roll off a desk than round ones, and easier to sharpen than square
ones.
How do they get the lead (actually, graphite) into the center of the
pencil? The wood starts out as two sections, each of which has a long
groove. The graphite goes into the groove, and the two pieces
are glued together.
An essay about the history of pencils, by the familiar "yellow number
2":
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn10/wn10-1/wn10-106.html
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