SYMMETRY OF MATTER
Lesson 4

Objective:   Students observe and classify tessellations or tilings.

Materials:

Safe-T – Geometry Template
            pattern blocks (optional)

 Teacher Notes:

A tessellation can be considered a pattern of polygons. Tessellations may also be referred to as tilings, mosaics, matrices, or lattices.  A basic organizing principle for tessellations is the sum of the interior angles of a polygon adds up to 360 degrees.

 The limits of a tessellation are that the polygons are regular.  The object of this exercise is to see how many different tessellations students can discover.  A pattern is not limited to just polygons.  So, a tessellation is a specialized pattern.  

A unit cell can be found in tessellations.  Then the unit cell is repeated to give an overall pattern or design.    If your students have not worked with tessellations before you may want them to work with basic pattern blocks that can make designs.  When you use pattern blocks you usually understand tessellations better.  Usually students will create a repeating pattern without even realizing it.

ANSWERS:

1,3,4   up to students design

2  aperiodic tiling