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Article: Tessellations
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- Mathematics
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Tessellations
For centuries, mathematicians and artists alike have been fascinated by tessellations, also called tilings. Tessellations of a
plane
can be found in the regular patterns of tiles in a bathroom floor, or flagstones in a patio. They are also widely used in the design of fabric or wallpaper. Tessellations of three-dimensional space play an important role in chemistry, where they govern the shapes of crystals.
A tessellation of a plane (or of space) is any subdivision of the plane (or space) into regions or "cells" that border each other exactly, with no gaps in between. The cells are usually assumed to come in a limited number of shapes; in many tessellations, all the ...
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