The following is a summary that I made for a math project, which was to make a tessellation. If you don’t know what a tessellation is, it is 1-unlimited shapes that can fit together over a surface. In my summary, I explain how I use a flash card to cut out a penguin, paste it on the top, which was opposite of where it was cut out from; and I also explain that I cut out the shape of an iceberg on the side of the flash card and pasted it on the opposite side. If you keep repeating, this shape on a correct surface, that is called tessellating. Enjoy! _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The geometry of my tessellation was very simple to make and color, and everything else that has to do with the making of the template and tracing the figure. Beginning, I thought that it would be interesting if I made an animal trying to call for help, because of an iceberg floating towards it. For the animal, my choices were down to a penguin and a polar bear. A polar bear seemed very difficult to cut out, and after about three attempts of cutting out a polar bear without success, I tried a penguin, which I got on the second try. The penguin figure was an octagon, with all of its interior and exterior angles being acute.
On the iceberg, there were many more angles to measure than on the penguin. While measuring, I noticed that most of the interior angles on the penguin were acute. While cutting, I couldn’t get the flippers to be exactly the same distance from the head of the penguin. But from the way the penguin is showed in the tessellation, the flipper closest to the head measured about 31°, while the opposite measured about 46°. Because of the scissors, some of the lines were curved, so that instead of being a circular head, there were tiny sides, which I decided not to count for the number of sides of the penguin. Without the small sides, there were eight sides on the penguin. All of the angles on the penguin were acute, because of the actual figure of a penguin I saw in an image. However, for the iceberg, I decided to include all of the tiny sides, because that is the actual shape of an iceberg; and I wanted to make it as realistic as possible. On the iceberg, it was easier to measure the exterior rather than the interior angles. Overall, there were also eight sides on the iceberg figure, also making it an octagon.
Overall, this project was very fun and entertaining and helped express myself for the tessellation itself. Making a creative figure using just the flash card was difficult, but enjoyable.
