Introduction to Tessallations

Dale Seymour's Introduction to Tessellations is the clearest and most thorough explanation of tessellations I have come across. Although the book contains material that is suitable for a college level course, those following the Singapore Mathematics curriculum will find much of it perfectly suitable for use as supplementary material for grades 5 and up. Graph and dot paper suitable for student use is included in the book and separate teaching masters Tessellation Teaching Masters: 07900 are available. Highly recommended.

A plane tessellation is where a small number of patterns (sometimes only one) are repeated to completely cover a planar surface. To be a true tessellation, the covering can be extended to infinity in all directions. In many ways, tessellations are a merger of art and mathematics, because it is fairly easy to prove which geometric shapes can be used to tessellate the plane. There are also many practical uses in design, as they appear as the floors, walls and ceilings of many structures. The authors provide many colorful examples of tessellations as well as give instructions on how to create them. Basic geometry and knowledge of angles is all the mathematics you will need to understand them. The range of the types of tessellations surprised me, as a mathematician I am familiar with the concepts of tiling the plane, but the wide variety of shapes, even the face of a witch, a fish and the face of a dog are used to create tessellations. If you have any interest at all in tessellations, particularly if you are an artist, then this is a book you must read. It is also a great resource for elementary and middle schoolteachers.