The Socolar–Taylor tile is a single non-connected

tile Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, Rock (geology), stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, wa ...

which is aperiodic on the

Euclidean plane In mathematics, the Euclidean plane is a Euclidean space of dimension two. That is, a geometric setting in which two real quantities are required to determine the position of each point ( element of the plane), which includes affine notions ...

, meaning that it admits only non-periodic tilings of the plane (due to the Sierpinski's triangle-like tiling that occurs), with rotations and reflections of the tile allowed.. It is the first known example of a single aperiodic tile, or "

einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

". The basic version of the tile is a simple hexagon, with printed designs to enforce a local matching rule, regarding how the tiles may be placed. It is currently unknown whether this rule may be geometrically implemented in two dimensions while keeping the tile a

connected set In topology and related branches of mathematics, a connected space is a topological space that cannot be represented as the union of two or more disjoint non-empty open subsets. Connectedness is one of the principal topological properties ...

. This is, however, confirmed to be possible in three dimensions, and, in their original paper, Socolar and Taylor suggest a three-dimensional analogue to the monotile. Taylor and Socolar remark that the 3D monotile aperiodically tiles three-dimensional space. However the tile does allow tilings with a period, shifting one (non-periodic) two dimensional layer to the next, and so the tile is only "weakly aperiodic". Physical copies of the three-dimensional tile could not be fitted together without allowing reflections, which would require access to four-dimensional space.

Gallery

References

External links

Previewable digital models of the three-dimensional tile, suitable for 3D printing, at ThingiverseOriginal diagrams and further information on Joan Taylor's personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Socolar-Taylor tile Aperiodic tilings