What is a tessellation

What is a tessellation? A tessellation is the creation of a two dimensional plane with the use of a geometric shape repeatedly and leaving no gaps. Tessellations can be found everywhere in our daily life and also in nature. For example of tessellations that can be seen anywhere is the sidewalks that you walk on, even though it’s a simple tessellation it is still a tessellation. Another example of a tessellation that can be seen in nature is a beehives comb, the pattern in side is a tessellation made of octagons which stores honey.

The word “tessellation” got its name from the latin word “tessella” which mean small cube. The history is of tessellations are actually very short. In 1619 Johannes Kepler one of the first people to make record of tessellation when he wrote about regular and semiregular tessellation, which are coverings of a plane with regular polygons. In 1891 a Russian crystallographer Yevgraf Fyodorov proved that every periodic tiling of the plane features one of seventeen different groups of isometries.(source taken from Wikipedia)

M.C Escher a famous dutch artist who uses tessellations in all of his art work. M.C Escher is not only just an artist but a math major. In every artwork of Escher is has many tessellation which are used to define his artwork.