12.1 Tessellating shapes (MATH)

A tessellation is a pattern made of identical shapes. You can make your own tessellation by fitting copies of a shape together, without gaps or overlaps. You say the shape tessellates, or is a tessellating shape.

Here are some examples of shapes that tessellate with themselves:

Here are the examples of shapes that do not tessellate with themselves. There are gaps between the shapes : 

 

When you make a tessellation are made by repeating a shape and using half-turn rotations of the same shape. For examples, this triangleand a half-turn rotation of the same trianglefit together exactly to make a tessellation like this. 

In any tessellation, the sum of the angles at the point where the vertices of the shape is 360°. Look closely at three of the tessellations above.

work this out!

1. explain how you know that a regular hexagon will tessellate. show all your working and include diagram in your explanation.


You may check this website if you still didn't understand:

http://www.coolmath4kids.com/tesspag1.html

http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/tessellation.html