This PREP workshop was made possible by the NSF grant DUE: 0341481

From Prep08Wiki

Moroccan mosaics, or zillij, provide a rich source of tesselation examples. Examine the tesselation below, which is referred to in Islamic patterns as "Khatam."

1. What rotational symmetries do you see? What are the centers of rotation?

2. Does the pattern have reflectional symmetry? On a printout indicate the mirror lines.

An applet that lets you create your own mosaics and the last one is for graph paper:

http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/washington/taprats/index.html

Use the applet to create at least 4 different patterns. Experiment with the applet. Look at the different settings. Print out the patterns.

3. For each of patterns you created, indicate the centers of rotation. Label them with the degree of rotation (i.e. lbale them with 2, 3, 4, or 6).

4. Find all mirror lines.

5. Determine the symmetry groups.

Additional Information

For some beautiful (colored) examples see for instance:

http://www.mosaic-tile-design.com/zillij-zellij.html

http://moroccandesign.com/moroccan-mosaics-the-art-of-zillij

For graph paper:

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

Here are two examples user:Debra created:

File:MoroccanTile1.pdf

File:MoroccanTile2.pdf