Raise your hand if you’ve heard of M.C. Escher. Now raise your hand if you know what tessellations are.
Surprise! If you know of M.S. Escher’s work, you are also familiar with tessellations — even if you don’t recognize the term. In fact, if you have or have seen a tiled floor, tessellations are familiar to you.
A tessellation is a pattern of identical, interlocking shapes. There can be no space between the shapes and none of the shapes can overlap. Escher created complex tessellations of birds, lizards and fish. But even simple, square tiles are tessellations.
This video shows how they are made. Don’t watch it expecting a tutorial. Just look at how the shapes are formed and then replicated and rotated to form the tessellation. A design like this one is pretty complex, but it’s interesting to see it in motion.
(There is no sound with this video, so there’s no need to crank up your speakers.)
Bonus! I found this really great video that shows how to make a tessellation. Check it out.
Where have you seen tessellations? When do you think they’re useful or interesting to see? Leave your comment!