how do shapes fill space?
Royal Society Chartermark

How do Shapes Fill Space?

Did you come to the exhibit?
Were you inspired to think more about mathematics, or make mathematical designs?
Please send us your stories and images!
HyperbolicTiling
What happens when you put seven triangles round every corner?
Tiling from Vakil Mosque Shiraz
What are the secrets of Islamic master craftsmen?
120 Cell
Can you see four dimensions?
Penrose Tiling
Does this pattern repeat?

Art? Science? A window into mathematical beauty?

Thanks to all who joined us at the Royal Society Summer Science exhibition.
The exhibit materials are below, goodies include:
Factsheets (added 19/7/9)
Posters (added 19/7/9)
4d object viewer
Accessible maths books and activities (added 20/7/9)

Do Tilings beat computers?

Given a collection of shapes, can you tell whether it will fill space? Can we program a computer to answer this question for any possible collection of shapes?

The Idea

The idea to offer an exhibit on space-filling tilings was put forward by Edmund Harriss, who also assembled the exhibition team. Edmund is the leading scientist of our exhibit.

Our proposal was among the 21 competitively selected exhibits from more than 100 entries.

Exhibit Materials

Factsheets and Posters
Books and Activities
4d viewing software

Our Team

Edmund Harriss (Open University, Milton Keynes & Imperial College, London)
Uwe Grimm (Open University, Milton Keynes)
Richard Henry (Birkbeck College & British Museum, London)
John Hunton (University of Leicester)
Vinay Kathotia (Royal Institution, London)
Jeroen Lamb (Imperial College, London)

Sponsors

We are indebted to our funder and sponsors. Without their support the exhibit would not have been possible:

EPSRC Imperial Leicester Open RI
Polydron Zometool
Creative Commons License
Page maintained by Edmund Harriss
Last modified: 17 August 2009