tessella - the Scientia Review

Regular and Semi-Regular Tessellations
The two major types of tessellations are regular and semi-regular tessellations
both of which use only regular polygons. A series of congruent regular polygons
comprises a regular tessellation, and two types of congruent regular polygons
comprise a semi-regular tessellation. All regular tessellations use only
equilateral triangles, squares, or regular hexagons. These shapes can tessellate
by themselves because 360, the number
of degrees around a point, is a multiple
of their interior angle (refer the box at
the bottom of the page) . Because semi
-regular tessellations can use more than
one type of regular polygon there are
eight possible combinations of shapes.
As with regular tessellations, the interior
angles of all the shapes at a point
types of congruent regular polygons
must add to 360 degrees. Although there
are 18 ways to fit regular polygons around a point, only 8 of these combina-
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As shown above, semi-regular tessellations use multiple
As shown above, equilateral triangles, squares, and regular hexagons are the only three
polygons whose interior angles can add up to 360 degrees. Because of this, they are the
only three shapes that can be used to make regular tessellations