First Penrose Tiling/Original Pentagonal Tiling (P1)

Roger Penrose started his formation of different types of tiling with the first Penrose tiling, commonly abbreviated as P1. In 1619, Johannes Kepler, a notable astronomer, wrote in his Harmonices Mundi that gaps in tiling that use regular polygons can only be filled with pentagrams, which are star polygons, decagons, and related shapes. As Penrose also observed, any attempt to tile a plane with regular pentagons will result in gaps. Penrose used Kepler's observation as inspiration, which leads to the types of shapes used in the first Penrose tiling: pentagons, stars (pentagrams), boats, and diamonds. In the image below, an example of a first Penrose tiling can be observed (Wikipedia). Any proceeding terms can be visualized in the image.

  • An example of a pentagon is shaded in red.
  • An example of a star (pentagram) is shaded in orange.
  • A boat is essentially three-fifths of a star. An example of a boat is shaded in green.
  • An example of a diamond is shaded in purple.

For the first Penrose tiling, there are a total set of six prototiles, which are combinations of the different shapes that can be used without breaking the matching rules.

Example of First Penrose Tiling/Original Pentagonal Tiling (P1)

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Recent Math PhD now doing a post-doctorate at UC Riverside.

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