The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to tile a bathroom floor, square tiles are the simplest option—they fit together without any gaps in a grid pattern that can ...

Standing at the intersection between mathematics and the tiler's trade is the so-called einstein problem. Despite its name, this mathematical question has nothing to do with the Nobel Prize winner ...

Is it possible to tile a surface with a single shape in such a way that the pattern never repeats itself? In 2022, a mathematical solution to this 'Einstein problem' was discovered for the first time.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Computer generated image of concentric rings around a central shaded hat (dark blue). Look carefully! Mathematicians have invented ...

The same researchers behind the 13-sided "hat" shape have stumbled upon a version that improves upon the original in a very important way. Reading time 2 minutes In March, a group of mathematicians ...

The recently discovered “hat” aperiodic monotile admits tilings of the plane, but none that are periodic [SMKGS23]. This polygon settles the question of whether a single shape—a closed topological ...

For some, tiles are rarely thought of unless it’s time for home renovations, but for mathematicians, they present plenty of conundrums—and a clever team has just cracked a particularly tricky one.

For a long time, scientists associated crystal structures with an ordered arrangement of atoms in a repeating lattice-like pattern, believing it to be the most stable configuration. However, by the ...