From: Suzanne A. (for Teacher2Teacher Service)
Date: Apr 25, 2001 at 16:00:45
Subject: Re: Tessellations shapes

Dear Anna,

I'm sorry that my explanation and suggestion of a Website was not helpful. I
will try again and this time I'll try answering each of your questions.

>I was wondering what kinds of shapes make up a tesselations?

There are different kinds of tessellations. "Regular" tessellations can be
made using triangles, squares or hexagons.

>Like I know
>that you can make tesselations from triangles, I always wondering about
>squares?  Do squares make tesselations?

Yes, you can make a tessellation from squares.

>Do hexagons?

Yes, you can make a tessellation from hexagons.

>What kinds of shapes would make up a tesselations?

Think about fitting 4 squares together and think about the corners that all
touch in the middle of that new shape.

_|_
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It's rather difficult to "show" in email but that is kind of what I am trying
to explain. Can you see that the 4 angles coming together each equal 90
degrees but together equal 360 degrees? That is one thing that helps you
determine whether shapes will tessellate or not.

Every Website that I know of on tessellations is listed on my Tessellation
Tutorials page:

Tessellation Tutorials
http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/tess.intro.html

under the title:  Other Tessellation Links and Related Sites

but I would still recommend that you read this page, "What Is a Tessellation?"
and look at the diagrams to understand how polygons tessellate:

http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/whattess.html

 -Suzanne A., for the T2T service

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