Course:Harris, Fall 07: Diary Week 1

Mon:

• written statements, "why are you taking the course, or whatever"
• free time, look at Escher in offical site galleries
• what's neat about Escher?
  • infinity
  • impossible figures
  • evolving shapes
• tesselation implies geometry (ex: http://www.mcescher.com/ > Galleries > Switzerland and Belgium > Development II)
• what is a tessellation?
  • polygon
    • closed
    • straight sides
    • non-self-intersecting
  • repeated images (required only for "regular" tessellations)
    • translation
    • rotation
    • reflection
  • no gaps
  • vertices meet vertices

Wed:

• broke into groups to work on Quadrilaterals Exploration
  • all groups finished question 1
  • some success with question 2, most groups had some false starts

Fri:

• finished up Quadrilaterals Exploration in 10-15 minutes, turned it in
• began Tessellations Exploration
  • did first part of question 1--"non-proper" triangle tessellations--as a whole (after some exploring)
  • most groups needed hints with question 2 (rhombuses)
  • groups more or less finished questions 1-4; rest to be done next time