Pentomizer - Every known tessellating convex pentagon

thingiverse

With this Customizer, users can print all kinds of pentagons, good ones and not-so-good ones, including fifteen different types discovered by mathematicians this year! The good news is that we've found them, but the bad news is there might be more out there waiting to be discovered. "Good ones," when talking about pentagons, means they are irregular convex shapes that fit together perfectly on a flat surface, called tiling or tessellating. That's exactly what this Customizer can do - it creates all the known types of tessellating pentagons since 1918, when mathematicians first started trying to find them. "Found so far" means we've been working hard to discover new ones, but there are still a lot out there! There are fifteen different classes of pentagons that can fit together on a flat surface. Each class could be its own unique shape or many similar-looking shapes. What's amazing is that this year mathematicians from the University of Washington Bothell found a brand new type of tessellating pentagon after a thirty-year search! Now, what can you make with this design? With the Customizer, users have complete control to turn these mathematical wonders into anything they imagine! Press the "Open in Customizer" button to start. Choose one of the fifteen different types of pentagons, decide how you want to use it (pattern, puzzle, picture, container, desk organizer, or even a cookie cutter!), adjust its size and angles within certain restrictions if possible. Press the "Create Thing" button to create your unique pentagon design. Don't forget to take a photo when you're done, click "I Made One" on this page, and upload it so everyone can see! UPDATE: If users want more options with their desk organizers, SpoonUnit has a fantastic remix for them. Vertex data for each pentagon class was kindly shared by Ed Pegg's Wolfram Demonstration Pentagon Tilings. To learn even more about these shapes, check out the Pentagonal tiling on Wikipedia! Stay connected with Mathgrrl: Twitter @mathgrrl , her geeky blog www.mathgrrl.com/hacktastic, or get a closer look at designs and prints in her Shapeways store, mathgrrl.com. This work is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. For special requests outside this license, contact request@mathgrrl.com.