Yay, even more new toys have arrived. These are regular polygons that can be used to fill an infinite plane with a repeating pattern.
These shapes are not magnetic like the Penrose tiles, but they come in four colors and five shapes, regular polygons with three sides (equilateral triangles), four sides (squares), six sides (regular hexagons), eight sides (regular octagons) and twelve sides (regular dodecagons).
A few years back, I drew pictures of some of the possible mix and match patterns that create regular tilings of the plane, and now I can re-create these with the new toys. This shot shows that the number of pieces used is finite.
But if I take a close-up, you can see that this could be part of a pattern that repeats indefinitely.
Thanks again to the folks at SeriousPuzzles.com, where I bought my new toys.
New toys! So much fun.
4 comments:
These are so pretty that it's hard for a non-math person like me to realize that they also serve a serious purpose. Too bad that they aren't used more in schools to help teach math.
This kind of reminds me of Legos. When I was a kid, I adored them and couldn't get enough to build my castles. There's something addictive about them.
Matty Boy... here's an idea for another Math Post... the new tau... singing now... bye bye miss american Pi.... See this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43581192/ns/technology_and_science-science/?GT1=43001
-BobManDo
Well, Matty Boy, are you going to be pi-us or will you go with the tau?
http://tauday.com/
I'm sticking with pi, thanks for asking, Bob. Multiplying by two or dividing by two is not worth going to war.
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