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Heesch Numbers of Unmarked Polyforms

After a few years of not writing about the subject here, I’m happy to offer an update on Heesch numbers! If you want to save time, you can skip right to the paper I wrote, or experiment with the associated dataset. Back in 2017, I wrote a series of four …

The Metaphysics of Speed Limits

(define (speeding-fine speed) (cond [(< speed 100) 0] [(and (>= speed 100) (< speed 120)) (* 3.00 (- speed 100))] [(and (>= speed 120) (< speed 130)) (* 4.50 (- speed 100))] [(and (>= speed 130) (< speed 150)) (* 7.00 (- speed 100))] [(>= speed 150) (* 9.75 (- …

The Tactile libraries

I developed a new open-source software library for manipulating isohedral tilings, based on the work I did on this topic during my PhD. The library is available in C++ and Javascript, and I offer a few fun automated and interactive demo programs that anybody can use to play with isohedral tilings.

Heesch Numbers, Part 2: Polyforms

In the first post in this series, I introduced the concept of a shape’s Heesch number. In brief, if a shape doesn’t tile the plane, its Heesch number is a measure of the maximum number of times you can surround the shape with layers of copies of itself. (Shapes that do …