June 17 – World Tessellation Day

Posted on June 17, 2019


Tessellations are one of my favorite math things. 


And art things.

Artist M. C. Escher is considered a master of tessellations.
Actually, that's why June 17 was chosen as World Tessellation Day;
today is Escher's birthday! (See "Also on this date" below.)
And tile things.

Zellige terracotta tiles in Marrakech

Tessellations are arrangements of shapes that fit together in a repeated pattern, with no gaps between shapes, and with no overlapping.

Tessellations can even be seen in nature (although they tend to be a bit imperfect).

Honeycomb is made of repeated hexagons

Snake scales

The top of basalt columns - imperfect hexagons -
that make up California's Devil's Postpile
World Tessellation Day was created by author / illustrator Emily Grosvenor. Check out her website.

The Exploratorium offers tessellation exploration here.

And there are lots of other tessellation projects offered online, such as this Wikki Stix offering

Check out this earlier post.

Tessellations can apparently be non-Euclidean...three-dimensional...or fractal!






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