Tessellations Review

A tessellation is a pattern of closed shapes that completely covers a surface.

There are 3 rules:

1. The shapes of the tessellation do not over lap:

2. There are no gaps between the shapes:

3. The sum of the measures of the angles around a vertex point must be exactly 360 °.

Regular Tessellations:

A regular tessellation is made by repeating congruent copies of one kind of regular polygon. Congruent means the polygons have the same shape and size.

• Vertices of at least 3 polygons meet at each vertex point.
• There are at least 3 angles around each vertex point.

There are only three possible shapes of polygons that will form a regular tessellation:

Squares

Equilateral triangles

Regular hexagons

Semi-regular Tessellations:

• Use at least 2 different shapes.
• The shapes used are regular polygons.
• The same combination of regular polygons meets in the same order at each vertex.