Graduate Colloquium

Eric Boulter, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Plane Old Tilings"

Have you ever wanted to solve a really big jigsaw puzzle? A REALLY big one? What about the size of $\mathbb{R}^2$? It turns out that there's a branch of math devoted entirely to doing this: the theory of plane tilings. In this talk I will give a brief tour of tiling theory, and discuss which monohedral tilings (tilings where all the puzzle pieces are congruent) are possible. We will also build some interesting examples, including rep-tiles and the Penrose tilings. 

(No lizards will be harmed in the course of this talk.)

MC 5501