Questions tagged [tiling]

For questions about mathematical tiling.

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Reference for Wang tile

I am working on projects in solving ground state of generalized Ising models. One recent work involves tiling with basic tiles that filled the whole lattice. For example, we could obtain results: ...
user40780's user avatar
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79 votes
6 answers
4k views

Does every polyomino tile R^n for some n?

This is a question posed by Adam Chalcraft. I am posting it here because I think it deserves wider circulation, and because maybe someone already knows the answer. A polyomino is usually defined to ...
Timothy Chow's user avatar
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51 votes
3 answers
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Can the sphere be partitioned into small congruent cells?

On the unit $2$-sphere ${\mathbb S}^2$ furnished with the geodesic distance, a subset homeomorphic to a planar disk is called a cell. A finite family of cells is a tiling if their interiors are ...
Wlodek Kuperberg's user avatar
35 votes
5 answers
3k views

Tiling the plane with incongruent isosceles triangles

It is not difficult to tile the plane with incongruent triangles. One could tile with equilateral triangles, and then partition each equilateral into three triangles, displacing their common ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
27 votes
1 answer
1k views

Terrible tilers for covering the plane

Let $C$ be a convex shape in the plane. Your task is to cover the plane with copies of $C$, each under any rigid motion. My question is essentially: What is the worst $C$, the shape that forces the ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
27 votes
3 answers
12k views

Which unfoldings of the hypercube tile 3-space: How to check for isometric space-fillers?

Recently Mark McClure constructed and displayed the 261 unfoldings of the hypercube (tesseract) in response to the question, "3D models of the unfoldings of the hypercube?": The first 9 unfoldings ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
896 views

Decidability of periodic tilings of the plane

I'm interested in tilings of the plane by squares, with labels on the edges. It's well known that (1) the question "can one tile the plane with the following finite set of tiles?" is undecidable, and (...
grok's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
250 views

A claim on partitioning a convex planar region into congruent pieces

Let us define a perfect congruent partition of a planar region $R$ as a partition of it with no portion left over into some finite number n of pieces that are all mutually congruent (ie any piece can ...
Nandakumar R's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
172 views

Tiling with triangles of same circumradius and inradius

Consider a pair of positive real numbers $r$ and $R$ with $r<R/2$. Then we can form infinitely many triangles all with circumradius $R$ and inradius $r$. For any such pair, the resulting triangles ...
Nandakumar R's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
387 views

Computational approach deciding whether a set of Wang Tile could tile the space up to some size

As an applied person, I'm facing one practical problem deciding whether a set of Wang tile could tile the plane periodically or aperiodically. Although both problems seem undecidable, but I'm on a ...
user40780's user avatar
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34 votes
1 answer
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Can we three-color a tiling of the plane with Smith, Meyers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss's einstein?

The tiling world is a bit aflutter recently with the drop of Smith, Meyers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss's paper showing an einstein - a simply-connected polygon - that must aperiodically tile the ...
Mark S's user avatar
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18 votes
1 answer
654 views

Higher dimensional generalization of: Any quadrilateral tiles the plane?

Any (non-self-intersecting) quadrilateral tiles the plane.     (MathWorld image.) Q. What is the strongest known generalization of this statement to higher dimensions? I.e., $\mathbb{R}^d$ ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
453 views

The sparsest planar net that captures every unit segment

Let $\cal C = \lbrace C_i \rbrace$ be a collection of rectifiable curves in the plane with the property that every unit-length segment meets at least one curve in at least one point. Call such a ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
1k views

(non-)existence of the aperiodic monotile

The aperiodic monotile problem asks whether there exists a single tile that every tiling of the plane made with it results non-periodic. What is known about this problem? If this tile exists, how can ...
Melquíades Ochoa's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
403 views

Thinnest 2-fold coverings of the plane by congruent convex shapes

It is an unsolved problem to determine the "thinnest" $2$-fold covering of the plane by disks. The $2$-fold coverage problem by disks is to find the minimum number of congruent (unit-radius) disks ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
10 votes
5 answers
937 views

Is this an instance of any existing convex pentagonal tilings?

Inspired by Wikipedia's article on pentagonal tiling, I made my own attempt. I believe this belongs to the 4-tile lattice category, because it's composed of pentagons pointing towards 4 different ...
Jacky's user avatar
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10 votes
1 answer
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How many positions of a tiling polygon can occur simultaneousy?

Let $T$ be a polygon which tiles the plane. For an instance of $T$ (mirrored or not), call the set of its translates a position of $T$. My question: How many different positions can occur in ...
Wolfgang's user avatar
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9 votes
3 answers
808 views

Conjecture on NP-completeness of tesselation of Wang Tile up to finite size

Motivated by these following questions on tessellation: coloring in lattice Reference for Wang Tile Computational approach deciding whether a set of Wang Tile could tile the space up to some size ...
user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
1k views

How did Gauss characterize the metrical relations in the uniform (4 4 4) tiling of the hyperbolic unit disk?

My purpose is to verify an historical hypothesis I have on Gauss's tesselation of the unit disk as described in John Stilwell "Mathematics and its history". Looking at the relevant pages in ...
user2554's user avatar
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6 votes
0 answers
641 views

Unique domino tiling

Question: how does one enumerate all star-convex $2n$-vertex sublattices of the plane that have the unique domino-tiling property? Definitions: A subset $S$ of the $xy$-plane is star-convex if there ...
John Murray's user avatar
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6 votes
0 answers
176 views

Optimal planar net for catching convex shapes

Imagine you want to make a net out of string to filter and catch objects of a certain size, minimizing the length of string employed. (This actually arises in filtering biological impurities from ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
154 views

Hooks, monomers, dimers and Young diagrams: Part I

Following Richard Stanley's pointers regarding my earlier MO question, I decided to "scale-down" the problem and add a slight "twist" to it. Consider the one-line partition $\lambda_n=(n)$ and its ...
T. Amdeberhan's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
300 views

For what n and t can a square be partitioned into n similar rectangles in t congruence classes?

It is known that a square can be partitioned into three similar rectangles, all mutually non-congruent. I don't think it's possible with four. With what numbers of rectangles can this be achieved? And ...
user avatar
92 votes
5 answers
4k views

Can a row of five equilateral triangles tile a big equilateral triangle?

Can rotations and translations of this shape perfectly tile some equilateral triangle? I originally asked this on math.stackexchange where it was well received and we made some good progress. Here's ...
Oscar Cunningham's user avatar
33 votes
1 answer
3k views

Tiling a square with rectangles

Is it possible to completely tile a square with different rectangles of integer sides but all with the same area? The original problem, not requiring integer sides for rectangles, was proposed by Joe ...
Bernardo Recamán Santos's user avatar
33 votes
1 answer
7k views

tiling a rectangle with the smallest number of squares

This is based on another thread. For $m,n\in \mathbb N$, let $f(m,n)$ be the minimum number of squares with integer sides needed to tile a $m\times n$ rectangle. Recently, a table of values for $n\le ...
Wolfgang's user avatar
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31 votes
5 answers
1k views

Fair cutting of the plane with lines

An infinite countable family $\cal{L}$ of straight lines in the plane $\mathbb{R}^2$ forms a fair cutting of the plane if the following conditions are satisfied: $\bullet$ No circle intersects ...
Wlodek Kuperberg's user avatar
24 votes
1 answer
1k views

Which unfoldings of the $d$-dimensional hypercube tile $(d{-}1)$-space?

A six year old question, Which unfoldings of the hypercube tile $3$-space?, has just been answered by Moritz Firsching: All $261$ unfoldings tile space! So now we know: For $d=2$, the unfolding of ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
22 votes
1 answer
1k views

Aperiodic monotile without reflections?

The recently discovered amazing aperiodic monotile (or "einstein") of David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss tiles the plane only if reflections of the ...
Timothy Chow's user avatar
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20 votes
2 answers
2k views

Smallest tile to tessellate the hyperbolic plane

Is it known what the smallest tile (in terms of area) that can tessellate the hyperbolic plane is? In particular, it should tessellate the plane by itself. I think it will be a Triangle group, but I'...
Christopher King's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
1k views

Random walk on a Penrose tiling

Pólya proved that a random walk on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ almost surely returns to the origin, or, equivalently, returns to the origin infinitely often. It was subsequently established that in $\mathbb{Z}^3$, ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
1k views

slick-proof-of-trick-for-counting-domino-tilings

The trick for rewriting the number of domino tilings of a simply-connected finite lattice region as the absolute value of the determinant of a matrix (due I believe to Kasteleyn and Percus, but if ...
James Propp's user avatar
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14 votes
5 answers
1k views

How can one construct a four-coloring of a tiling of the plane with Smith, Myers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss's aperiodic monotile?

This is motivated by the new paper of Smith, Myers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss, wherein they define the existence of an aperiodic monotile. Clearly their tiling is not three-colorable, so we have ...
Lucas Blakeslee's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
319 views

Convex polygonal tiling of the square such that every line intersects at most k polygons

Consider a tiling of a square by convex polygons, such that every line through the square intersects at most $k$ polygons. Let $n$ be maximum number of polygons such a tiling can have. What is the ...
Maxwell Allman's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
481 views

Tiling with incommensurate triangles

Say that two triangles are incommensurate if they do not share an edge length or a vertex angle, and their areas differ. Suppose you'd like to tile the plane with pairwise incommensurate triangles. I ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
2k views

How to divide a square into three similar rectangles

Preparing some exercises for my High School pupils I came across this question: How can you tile a square into three similar (ie., same shape, different size) rectangles? With a bit of algebra it can ...
TecnoGrial's user avatar
9 votes
4 answers
1k views

Tiling the plane with pairwise non-congruent rational triangles

A rational triangle is one in which all side lengths are rational numbers. Question: Can we tile the Euclidean plane with rational triangles that are pairwise non-congruent? No further requirements on ...
Nandakumar R's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
276 views

Thinnest covering of the plane by regular pentagons

Q. Is it known what is the thinnest covering of the infinite plane by regular pentagons? By covering I mean every point of the plane is covered. By thinnest I mean the proportion of the plane covered ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

What rectangles can a set of rectangles tile?

(I asked this question first on math.stackexchange, but did not get any responses so I thought I would try here.) If we have a set of $p_i \times q_i$ rectangles ($p_i, q_i \in \mathbf{N}$), which $m \...
Herman Tulleken's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
389 views

one-dimensional (sort of) tilings

Consider the following one-dimensional tiling problem. Each "tile" is a sequence of nonnegative integers. A "region" is also such a sequence. I can shift the "tiles", or reverse them. A tiling is ...
Cristopher Moore's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
87 views

Tiling the plane with mutually non-congruent equal area rectangles

Question: Is it possible to tile the plane with mutually non-congruent rectangles all of equal area? Note 1: If the answer is "yes" then, there could be constrained versions of the question ...
Nandakumar R's user avatar
  • 5,473
6 votes
2 answers
208 views

Partition of polygons into 'strongly acute' and 'strongly obtuse' triangles

Definition: Let us refer to obtuse triangles with the largest angle strictly above a given cutoff value as 'strongly obtuse' - the definition is parametrized by the cutoff value. Likewise, strongly ...
Nandakumar R's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
149 views

monomer-dimer tiling of a Young diagram

As a modest start, I propose the below problem for a special set of partitions. Perhaps it is known. Let $\lambda_n=(n,n-1,\dots,2,1)$ be the staircase partition and its corresponding Young diagram $...
T. Amdeberhan's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
397 views

Smallest tile to *isohedrally* tessellate the hyperbolic plane

Is there a smallest tile (in terms of diameter) that isohedrally tessellates the hyperbolic plane? In this question, we ask the same question without the isohedral requirement, and the answer was no. ...
Christopher King's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
210 views

Aperiodic set of corner Wang Tile [closed]

There is quite some reference on aperiodicity of the edge-type of Wang Tile. But I could not yet find aperiodic corner type of Wang Tiles... Could someone provide me some instances (better with ...
user40780's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
556 views

Domino tiling obtained from space-filling curves, is possible to predict basic properties?

Periodic and aperiodic domino tiling systems can be obtained by the following construction rules: Draw a regular square grid n×n of n2 cells. Select a space-filling curve that is consistent with ...
Peter Krauss's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
283 views

References and upper bounds for the SONNAT tiling game?

Introduction In a video released about a month ago, Pembesita describes1 a tiling game called SONNAT: Same Orientation Neighbour Not Allowed, Tiling. In the single-player game2, the player may employ ...
Max Muller's user avatar
  • 4,485
3 votes
1 answer
369 views

Radial tilings with variable area ratios

I was looking at this neat page on logarithmic spiral tilings when a question popped up: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/symmetry/log-spir.htm It seems that in all of the tilings shown, the area of each ...
Joel Ford's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
1k views

Minimizing the Perimeter of a polyomino

Imagine I generate some polyomino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyomino) with $N$ unit squares, under the constraint that I want to maximize the number of shared edges between unit squares, or ...
Azure's user avatar
  • 23
2 votes
0 answers
140 views

Tradeoffs in translation-invariant tilings of $\mathbb{R}^3$

Suppose I tile $\mathbb{R}^3$ in a ($\mathbb{Z}^3$-)translation-invariant manner. If we insist on the tiling being regular, then we are left with only the cubic tiling. However, suppose that we ...
squiggles's user avatar
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