G Stevenson 2003

What Are Tessellations? Basically, a tessellation is a way to tile a floor (that goes on forever) with shapes so that there is no overlapping and no gaps. Example:

G Stevenson 2003 Regular Tessellations  RULE 1: the tessellation must tile a floor with no overlapping or gaps  RULE 2: the tiles must be regular polygons – and all the same  RULE 3: each vertex must look the same

G Stevenson 2003 What’s a Vertex? Where all the “corners” meet! What can we tessellate using our 3 rules?

G Stevenson 2003 Triangles? Yep! Notice what happens at each vertex! The interior angle of each equilateral triangle is 60 degrees … = 360 degrees

G Stevenson 2003 Squares? Yep! What happens at each vertex? = 360 degrees again! So, we need to use regular polygons that add up to 360 degrees

G Stevenson 2003 Will Pentagons Work? The interior angle of a pentagon is 108 degrees = 324 degrees Will they tessellate? Nope!

G Stevenson 2003 Hexagons? = 360 degrees Yep!

G Stevenson 2003 Octagons? No way!! Now we are getting overlaps. In fact, all polygons with more than 6 sides will overlap! So, the only regular polygons that tessellate are triangles, squares, rectangles and hexagons.

G Stevenson 2003 Let’s Experiment! The worksheet you are about to use has been created in MS Publisher. In the activity you will have to use ‘copy’ and ‘paste’. You may also have to ‘flip’ or ‘rotate’ the shapes to make them tessellate. Why not make your tessellations more attractive by using the ‘fill’ option.ViewView View worksheet