What are tessellations

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What are tessellations?
Presented by Sharon Furlong, Jackie Olson,
Mary Spieker
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Lets learn a little about the inventor of
TesselationsM.C. Escher

• Maurits Cornelis Escher, was born in Leeuwarden,
  Holland in 1898 and created unique and
  fascinating works of art.
•  While he was still in school his family planned
  for him to follow his father's career of
  architecture, but poor grades and a love for
  drawing and designing things sent him onto a
  different kind of work. He used mathematics to
  draw tessellations.
• Among his greatest admirers were
  mathematicians!   

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Historical and Geographical Connections

• Before Escher, tessellations could be seen in
  various cultures throughout history.
• Egyptian
• Persian
• Chinese
• Arabian
• In the 1300s, in Spain,
• the Moors used tile colored patterns creating
  symmetry and closely related to tessellations.

The Moors took light and dark river stone and
created intricate patterns on the walkways.
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Definition

• A dictionary will tell you that the word
  "tessellate" means to form or arrange small
  squares in a checkered or mosaic pattern.
• The word "tessellate" is derived from the Greek
  word "tesseres," which in English means "four."
• The first tilings were made from square tiles.

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What you need to start

• You need a regular polygon which has 3 or 4 or 5
  or more sides and angles, all equal.
• A regular tessellation means a tessellation made
  up of congruent regular polygons.

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What does that mean?

• Regular means that the sides of the polygon are
  all the same length.
• Congruent means that the polygons that you put
  together are all the same size and shape.
• Soto start you need to use the same polygon over
  and over again that has the the same size and
  shape!

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Start with the easiest!

• The three regular polygons that tessellate easily
  are the

triangles
squares
hexagons
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Here are some examples!

• a tessellation of triangles
• a tessellation of squares

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tessellation of hexagons

• Time to make your own tessellation!
• Start with an easy one and then

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Look where you can go!

• Digital Art inspired by M.C. Escher

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Remember

• MATH CAN BE FUN AND CREATIVE!!!

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Works Cited

• http//www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/escher/
• http//web.inter.nl.net/hcc/Hans.Kuiper/index.html
  
• www.mathforum.org/pubs/boxer/student.tess.html
• http//library.thinkquest.org/11750/eschpage/Tess5
  C.html