the.com/tiling
The only art form that physics, math, and your bathroom floor all agree on.
means The act or result of covering a surface with shapes—often repeating—so they fit together without gaps or overlaps, whether on a floor, wall, or computer screen.
from From 'tile,' which comes from Old English 'tigele,' itself borrowed from Latin 'tegula'—a tile—rooted in the verb 'tegere,' 'to cover' (a cousin of words like 'protect' and 'detect,' all about covering or uncovering). The '-ing' is the plain English suffix turning the act into a noun, so 'tiling' is literally 'the covering-with-tiles.' Mathematicians later borrowed the word for any gap-free covering of the plane, keeping faith with that ancient Latin idea of laying things down to cover a surface.
- forbidden symmetry
- Penrose tiles never repeat, breaking math's old rules
- nobel echo
- Quasicrystals matching them won a 2011 chemistry Nobel
- the hat
- 2023's single shape tiles infinitely without ever repeating
- only three
- Just triangle, square, hexagon tile floors alone
- islamic genius
- Medieval artisans built quasicrystals 500 years before physicists
penrose tiling — non-periodic pattern discovered by roger penrose in 1974 using two rhombus shapes
islamic geometric tiling — intricate patterns covering walls and floors in the alhambra palace in granada, spain since 1354
hexagonal tiling — six-sided honeycomb pattern found naturally in bee hives and used in bathroom floors worldwide