The Beauty of Tessellations

Tiling is one of the many beautiful patterns that we can see around us. Some of them are man-made and some are created by nature. For example, many modern homes nowadays have tiled floors or even walls. On the other hand, in nature some animals are able to create regular tilings such as shown in the image below. Now why do bees would choose such shape?

Tiling, or popularly known as tessellation in mathematics, is not just beauty for the eyes. It has many interesting mathematical properties. For example, one question that should be asked what are the shapes that can tile a plane? What are the properties of these shapes? What are the properties of polygons that cannot tessellate the plane? Of course these questions had been answered hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago, but they are a good exercise for the mind to those who haven’t encountered it. They are also good questions for students.  » Read more

How to Create Soap Bubbles Polyhedra

Mathematical beauty is most of the time enjoyed and appreciated by those who have knowledge mathematics. It can only be appreciated by the common person in tangible things or perhaps things that can be seen by the naked eye. Symmetry, tessellations, and patterns are several of the mathematical beauty who can be shared by math and non-math persons. Well, let’s add one more: bubbles.

The video above shows how to create soap bubbles polyhedra and other 3d shapes. Some of the polyhedra shown in the video above are tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron as well as some truncations. It also shows some strange behavior of bubbles when they are suspended in the air.

Enjoy watching and share the fun!

The Golden Ratio and the Perfect Human Face

Mathematical beauty ranges from simple Youtube embedding to the elegance of tessellations and symmetry all the way to the complexity of fractals.   In this post, we talk about the most interesting connection between beauty and mathematics, the mathematical beauty of the human face.

golden-ratio-face

The Golden Ratio was used by architects, sculptors, and artists since the ancient times to express beauty in their work.  Architectures based on Golden Ratio are considered pleasing to the human eye. The Pyramid of Egypt, the Pantheon, and the United Nations Building are just several examples of structures in Golden Ratio. » Read more

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