Jannis Ahlers (Long Bay Primary) found 8
transformations:
"The answer is 8. I found this by finding all the possible
positions the shape could end in by only using R, S and there
inverses."
The 8 possible transformations
are:
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
There are eight transformations made up only of
,
and their
inverses. Neat way to see this: draw the eight that you think exist, then
note that applying
or
to any of them gives another of them,
so we can't `escape' from these eight. The simplest expressions for the
eight are:
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
Notice that
. (Of course,
, so
, and
this can also be written as
.)
So the two expressions simplified are:
and
.