164
"The Hat", a shape that tiles but never makes a repeating pattern (upload.wikimedia.org)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Image by Cmglee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A square can tile a plane but can form a repeating pattern. Is there a single shape that can tile but never repeats? That's what's called the "einstein problem".

Link to the article

In 2010, the first never-repeating tile was discovered: the Socolar-Taylor tile. But it's a bit weird, having several separated, disconnected bits.

In 2022, "The Hat" (shown in pic) was discovered, and it's a lot less weird. It only has 13 sides and nice angles that are multiples of 30°.

Example tiling of "The Hat"
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 6 points 7 months ago*

I wonder if there's a way to apply this pattern to create some specific kind of cellular automaton.

Honestly idk enough about this stuff to even know if that's a dumb question, but at the very least, the image reminded me of that.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •