Triominoes

A triomino is a flat L shape made from 3 square tiles. A chess board is marked into squares the same size as the tiles and just one square, anywhere on the board, is coloured red. Can you cover the board with trionimoes so that only the square is exposed?

Paving Paths

How many different ways can I lay 10 paving slabs, each 2 foot by 1 foot, to make a path 2 foot wide and 10 foot long from my back door into my garden, without cutting any of the paving slabs?

LOGO Challenge 5 - Patch

Using LOGO, can you construct elegant procedures that will draw this family of 'floor coverings'?

Semi-regular Tessellations

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Students from Cowbridge Comprehensive School in Wales took a look at this problem. They convinced themselves that there are only 3 regular polygons that can be used to create regular tessellations. Some used this spreadsheet to justify their conclusion.

Catherine, from St. Michael's School, explained why it is possible to produce a semi-regular tessellation with triangle, hexagon, triangle, hexagon (or 3,6,3,6) meeting at each point:

In equilateral triangles angles are all $60^\circ$.
In regular hexagons angles are all $120^\circ$.
$2$ x $120^\circ$ = $240^\circ$ and $60^\circ$ x $2$ = $120^\circ$
$120^\circ$ + $240^\circ$ = $360^\circ$!

She then offered another semi-regular tessellation:

$4, 8, 8$ (square, octagon, octagon) meeting at each point.

You can use the interactivity provided with the problem to check that this combination works.

Classes 9S and 9W from Aylesbury High School tackled this problem.

We found that there were $7$ semi-regular tessellations. We made a list of all the interior angles for regular polygons. We tried all the combinations which add up to $360^\circ$.

Here are the solutions we found:

$150^\circ$ + $150^\circ$ + $60^\circ$: $12, 12, 3$

$150^\circ$ + $120^\circ$ + $90^\circ$: $12, 6, 4$

$135^\circ$ + $135^\circ$ + $90^\circ$: $8, 8, 4$

$120^\circ$ + $120^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$: $6, 3, 6, 3$

$120^\circ$ + $90^\circ$ + $90^\circ$ + $60^\circ$: $6, 4, 3, 4$

$120^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$: $6, 3, 3, 3, 3$

$90^\circ$ + $90^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$: $4, 4, 3, 3, 3$

$150^\circ$ + $90^\circ$ + $60^\circ$ + $60^\circ$: doesn't work

$144^\circ$ + $108^\circ$ + $108^\circ$: doesn't work

If there are more than $12$ sides, then because the angles are so big the shapes will overlap. So we decided we didn't need to consider any shapes with more than $12$ sides. We did test some out, but they didn't work.

Sue pointed out that actually there are $8$ semi-regular tessellations, because you can have both $4, 4, 3, 3, 3$ and $3, 4, 3, 4, 3$. You can see pictures of them all here.

Games. Tessellations. Generalising. Cubes. Visualising. Angles at a point/on a line. Mathematical reasoning & proof. Angle properties of shapes. Interactivities. Working systematically.

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Triominoes

Paving Paths

LOGO Challenge 5 - Patch

Semi-regular Tessellations

Stage: 3 Challenge Level: