Newly Discovered “Einstein” Shape Has Spawned Myriad of New Pattern Designs

It’s not everyday that a brand new shape is discovered. Nor one that can create an infinite plane, without every repeating itself.

The so-called “Einstein” shape was discovered by scientists this year, and is somewhat of a craze amongst those that love patterns and tiles.

Unique as it is, a contest by the National Museum of Mathematics in New York and the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust in London was held to see who could create the most creative application of this new shape.

Below are some of the entries, which show themselves as baked elements, quilting, ceramic tiling, paper art, and more.

Via The New York Times:

In March, a troupe of mathematical tilers announced that they had discovered an “aperiodic monotile,” a shape that can tile an infinite flat surface in a pattern that does not repeat — “einstein” is the geometric term of art for this entity.

David Smith, a shape hobbyist in England who made the original discovery and investigated it with three collaborators possessing mathematical and computational expertise, nicknamed it “the hat.”

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