Monthly Archives: November 2022

Grade 9, Math

Tessellations

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Tessellation: shape that is repeated across a plane without any gaps in between or overlaps over each other

Examples: tessellations are used very often in life. Examples are brick walls, flooring and ceiling tiles, or chess boards. Art with tessellations are made throughout various cultures such as islamic architecture. However, tessellations are not just limited to man made items, there are natural tessellations as well. Most common example is the hexagon cells in a honeycomb.

Honeycomb
Islamic art

My tessellations:

The first tessellation is a translation tessellation. I cut out shapes randomly from the bottom and the right and stick it to the top and the left. After I traced my tessellation, I noticed the top of the shape has a semi resemblance to a mountain so I split the shape into 3 sections and colored each section green. The green gets lighter as you move up the layers.
The second tessellation is a reflection tessellation. Again, I cut out random shapes. However, this time I cut out shapes from the bottom and the right and tape them to the top and the left and flipping them. With the colors, I tried making a checkered pattern out of black and white. Then I realized it would look stupid so I replaced the black with some random colors. And now it looks even more stupid.
The final tessellation is a rotation tessellation. I cut out random shapes from the bottom and the left and tape the shape I cut out from the bottom to the right and the left to the top. I chose some lighter colors that would compliment each other and made sure the tessellation wasn’t too bright for the watcher’s eye’s to bear.

Reflection: This was certainly an interesting experience and I have never done anything like this. I’ve never learned about the process of making tessellations. I didn’t face too much problems around the technical aspect. The problems I faced were time and my limitations. This entire project was very time consuming. You also need to color the tessellations however, I do not have any color pencils. And just before the project was due, I conveniently got Covid so I needed someone to get it for me. This part was a huge pain but it was cool seeing the tessellations being brought to life with colors. Overall, this project has taught me a lot about tessellations. Tessellations follows the concept of symmetry and applies this concept to art, architecture, and many other areas in everyday life that holds examples of tessellations including carpets, quilt, origami, and fabric patterns. (so yea basically just art)