How Does Tessellations In Maths Work?

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

Imagine you have a floor made up of square tiles, each tile is exactly the same size and shape, and they all join together neatly. That’s a tessellation! It's just like when you play with building blocks and arrange them in rows so they touch each other on every side.

Some shapes are especially good at tessellating because their sides match up perfectly with the sides of neighboring shapes. For example, squares, rectangles, triangles, and hexagons all work well together because their angles add up just right, like when you put two triangle corners together to make a square corner.

You can even create your own tessellations using paper! Take a piece of paper, draw a simple shape on it, then cut it out and move it around the paper to see how it fits with itself or other shapes. It’s like drawing a pattern that repeats over and over again, just like the tiles in your bathroom or the floor at school.

Tessellations are everywhere, and they help us understand how different shapes can join together in clever ways.