How Does Tessellations - Corbettmaths Work?

Tessellations are like puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly to cover a space without any gaps or overlaps.

Imagine you have a bunch of identical tiles, maybe square ones like the floor tiles in your kitchen. When you lay them down next to each other, they fill up the whole floor with no spaces left. That's a tessellation! It’s just like when you use different shapes, such as triangles or hexagons, and put them together so they match perfectly, kind of like how bricks are laid in a wall.

How Corbettmaths Explains It

Corbettmaths is like a teacher who shows you how to make these tessellations step by step. They might show you a shape, then ask you to draw it next to itself again and again, just like when you copy a drawing in your notebook. If the shapes fit together nicely every time, that means they can tessellate.

Sometimes, Corbettmaths uses examples with real-life things, like honeycombs or floor patterns. This helps you see how math is hiding in places you visit every day, like the kitchen or the park!

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Examples

  1. A child learns about tessellations using colorful tiles on the floor.
  2. Using bricks to make a wall that repeats in pattern.

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