Penrose Tiling project

 

What we have done for this project is a Penrose Tiling artwork that shows periodic and aperiodic patterns. It has stars, pentagons, rhombuses and several different shapes in different colors and makes a wonderful piece of art.

The challenge for me is to understand the non-repetitive nature of the tiles and their arrangement. We have to make sure that they are perfectly connected and that the vertices are touching. But it is satisfying because you can draw different shapes and cut them to prepare for class activities and let students try on their own to feel the magic behind tiling. And we found out that there are several different ways to complete the tiling with the rules. There are an almost infinite number of solutions. 

Now for the teaching purpose: I would like to use Penrose tiling as a project to introduce students to the connection between art and mathematics and try to explore some concepts such as geometry and symmetry. However, the challenge part is that it will be hard to make sure that the students grasp the principles we emphasize and don't get lost just in the artwork.