1 / 14

Activity 1-14: Wallpaper Patterns

www.carom-maths.co.uk. Activity 1-14: Wallpaper Patterns. Wallpaper patterns all have one thing in common; they are all produced by repeating a single fundamental tile by translation.

morey
Download Presentation

Activity 1-14: Wallpaper Patterns

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. www.carom-maths.co.uk Activity 1-14: Wallpaper Patterns

  2. Wallpaper patterns all have one thing in common; they are all produced by repeating a single fundamental tile by translation.

  3. That one basic rule gives rise to a range of possible patterns, each with their distinctive symmetries (the edges of the fundamental tiles are not taken as part of the pattern.)

  4. They may have ROTATIONAL symmetry; the pattern may rotate onto itself before rotating 360o back to itself. An order 6 example… Fundamental Tile

  5. They may have one or more REFLECTION symmetries; there may be mirror lines in the pattern. Fundamental Tile

  6. They may show GLIDE REFLECTIONS; the pattern may reflect in a ‘mirror’ line before translating (parallel to the mirror line) onto itself. Fundamental Tile

  7. And a tiling may contain a combination of such symmetries. A big question: how many possible different combinations of symmetries are possible? To start with we might ask, what orders of rotational symmetry are possible? It turns out that the pattern cannot have order of rotational symmetry greater than 6. The proof is surprisingly easy…

  8. Given a tiling with rotational symmetry order n,pick two centres of rotational symmetry that are a minimum distance apart. Now rotate the pattern 360/n degrees in opposite directions about each centre. What happens to these two centres? It appears that the two rotated centres are closer than the originals, contradicting the ‘minimum distance apart’ rule.

  9. But… For certain values of n, this does not happen.

  10. So a wallpaper pattern can only have rotational symmetry of order 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6. For all other n, however, the contradiction comes into play.

  11. It transpires that when you add reflection and glide reflection,there are only seventeen different possible patterns.The grid below shows how to classify these.

  12. If you click below, you will find pictures of the seventeen patterns,drawn by Miranda Lundy, author of the excellent Sacred Geometry. Note that each of the patterns has a name, given in the grid. Seventeen Wallpaper Patterns http://www.s253053503.websitehome.co.uk/carom/carom-files/carom-1-14.pdf Sacred Geometry Book link http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sacred-Geometry-Wooden-Books-Gift/dp/1904263046/ref=la_B001KHN7TI_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403356030&sr=1-1 Task: cut these out and draw up a poster showing the different patterns, using the grid given earlier.

  13. There is a famous urban myth that the Alhambra Palace in Granada features all seventeen patterns within it. John Jaworski’s excellent ebook on the subject can be bought below. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematicians-Guide-Alhambra-John-Jaworski-ebook/dp/B00EIADK5K A Mathematician’s Guide to the Alhambra There is a fun applet below that enables you to create the seventeen patterns from a given image. http://www.singsurf.org/wallpaper/wallpaper.php ‘Create the 17 Patterns’ Link

  14. With thanks to:Wikipedia, for a brilliant article on Wallpaper groups, and to John Jaworski. Miranda Lundy and Wooden Books. Carom is written by Jonny Griffiths, hello@jonny-griffiths.net

More Related