Revision as of 17:31, 27 November 2013

Penrose Tiling

By Joshua John Clark, Daniel Kerstiens, Jason Piercy, and Caleb Rouleau

Outline:

Overview of Penrose Tiling Example: Artist: Urs Schmid Photo by: Urs Schmid Date: drawn in 1995

Who is Roger Penrose?

 1. Oxford professor
2. PhD from Cambridge

note: penrose is from 500 years before him (check wikipedia)

Definition of non-periodic

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-periodic)

Types of Penrose Tilings

  1. Original Pentagonal
  2. Kite and Dart
     
  3. Rhombus

Symmetry

Penrose Tilings have two different types of symmetry: reflectional and rotational. The tiling's style of symmetry overall is referred to as local pentagonal symmetry[1], which means that patterns appear to repeat in small sections of the tiling. As these tilings are non-periodic, however, they do not have translational symmetry.

A Penrose tiling can't have more than one point of global five-fold symmetry. The reason for this fact is that rotating about an extra point of global five-fold symmetry would generate two closer centers of five-fold symmetry, which causes a contradiction with a lack of translational symmetry[2].

Also, the golden ratio (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2 appears within several aspects of Penrose tilings, some noted below[3].

Rules for construction

So how does one construct a Penrose tiling? The first thing to do is to pick the set of basic tiles from which to construct the tiling. Sir Roger Penrose originally came up with a set of 6 tiles, and later realized that he could simplify the set to only two tiles. The most common set is a pair of rhombi of the same side length, one with acute angle 36 degrees, and the other with acute angle 72 degrees. Note that each angle of the two rhombi is some multiple of 36 degrees, which is 180/5 degrees. This is where the 5-fold symmetry originates. There are other sets of tiles that work as well, such as the kite-and-dart that are made from dividing a rhombus with acute angle 72 degrees. [4]

These sets of tiles can be used to form periodic patterns as well as the aperiodic patterns of Penrose tiling, so there needs to be a set of matching rules to make sure that one obtains a Penrose tiling. These matching rules are related to how the sets of tiles were discovered in the first place.

Penrose used substitution tiling to discover the small sets of two tiles. Substitution tiling is the practice of replacing one tile with smaller tiles to create a new pattern. A regular pentagon could be divided into 6 smaller regular pentagons, with some space between them. Each of those 6 pentagons can be divided further into 6 smaller pentagons. Then, the gaps between those pentagons are filled in with rhombi, stars, or “paper boat” shapes. (See [5] or [6]). So, the pentagon was incompletely substituted for using these new shapes. Each of these new shapes can then be substituted for by using two rhombi, or by using a kite and a dart. So, a 5-fold aperiodic pattern was developed by using small, simple shapes of tiles to substitute for a large pentagon.

These tiles have to be put together in specific ways to be able to substitute for the small pentagons, rhombi, stars, and “paper boats” that substitute for the large pentagon. Out of observations of this fact came “matching rules” for putting the tiles together to form Penrose tilings.

For example, take the set of tiles containing two rhombi. Take the rhombus of acute angle 36 degrees and label on of the 144 degree angles. Label the opposite sides with arrows pointing toward the opposite vertex. Then label one of the 72 degree angles and draw arrows on the opposite sides pointing away from the opposite vertex (See [7]). Then make an infinite number of copies and arrange them so that labeled angles only touch labeled angles and adjacent sides either have no arrows or have arrows pointing the same way. Following these rules ensures that you get a tiling with 5-fold symmetry. And all tilings with 5-fold symmetry must be aperiodic.[5]

This leads to an interesting fact: only 8 combinations of the two rhombi can be used to form any intersection, and these 8 combinations make it so that the ratio of “thick” to “thin” rhombi is the golden ratio.[7] Certain ways of putting the rhombi together also correspond to projecting a 5-dimensional integer lattice onto a plane.[8]

Applications of Penrose Tiling

Penrose tiling has a surprising number of applications, mainly due to the fact that it has some order (5-fold symmetry, local symmetries) but is aperiodic overall. Some metals have 5-fold symmetry in their diffraction patterns.[4],[7] These materials are classified as “quasicrystals” because their crystal lattices are not periodic, but instead resemble a form of Penrose tiling. This feature makes them resistant to wear, and they make good coatings for non-scratch surfaces.[7] Penrose also used Penrose tilings to create puzzling board games with Pentaplex[7], and he sued Kleenex in 1997 over copyright infringement from using Penrose tiling patterns to create “thicker and softer” toilet paper that doesn’t “bunch up” because of its aperiodicity.[7],[9] This has prompted debate over the legitimacy of patenting mathematical discoveries.[10]

Other tilings

References

[1] Austin, David (2005), "Penrose Tiles Talk Across Miles", Feature Column (Providence: American Mathematical Society).

[2] Gardner, Martin (1997), Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-88385-521-8.

[3] Grünbaum, Branko; Shephard, G. C. (1987), Tilings and Patterns, New York: W. H. Freeman, ISBN 0-7167-1193-1. Gallian, J. (2013).

[4] Rusin, Dave. http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/94/penrose.alg

[5] Kaplan, Craig. "The Trouble with Five." http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue45/features/kaplan/index

[6] Penrose, Roger. "Pentaplexity: A Case of Non-Periodic Tilings of the Plane." The Mathematical Intelligencer 1998, Vol. 2, Iss. 1, pp. 32-37.

[7] Boyle, Allison. "From quasicrystals to Kleenex." http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue16/features/penrose/index

[8] Olbrich, Dave. "Penrose Tiles." http://traipse.com/penrose_tiles/index.html

[9] "Penrose Tiling vs. Kleenex." http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/penrose.htm

[10] Morris, Carl. "Penrose’s Patent and the Battle of the Tissue Tiles (Contains Mathematics)." http://quixoticquisling.com/2009/01/penroses-patent-and-the-battle-of-the-tissue-tiles-contains-mathematics/

Contemporary abstract algebra. (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/tiling

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/penrose.html