How to use tessellations to teach children math concepts?
I am using a soccer ball to introduce tessellations to children. I need ideas on how to introduce the concepts, though. I know that’s a little vague.. What I need is math content based upon the soccer ball tessellation, to teach children. Hope that makes sense and I hope you can help.
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Maybe this site will help. Maybe you can get them to find the picture of something and fill the shape in using tessellation.
Wikipedia has a splendid article on wallpaper symmetries, over my head technically but with great visuals. I’d start by teaching the classic triangles, squares, and hexagons to tile the plane. @Pandora‘s link shows why only those regular polygons work. Peruse works by graphic artist MC Escher for intricate & ingenious tessellations using figures of animals and people. Check out the “kite & dart” tiles invented by physicist Roger Penrose to create “aperiodic tilings” (not sure they qualify as tessellations) that have otherwise impossible five-fold symmetry.
Tessellation of the plane can be generalized to a sphere or torus – your soccer ball is pretty advanced stuff ! You can also generalize to 3 dimensions in terms of filling space by packing solid units, which then leads to theory of crystals.
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