Abstract
In the years 2005–2007 quite a big project took place in more than 1700 Italian schools, with the aim of stimulating interest in young people toward sciences like chemistry, physics, and mathematics. This chapter is a report on one of the laboratories of the project, namely “M.C. Escher: mathematics in art.” The object of the laboratory dealt with a very well-known aspect of the work of the artist, that is, tiling of the plane. The students involved in the laboratory were invited to first carefully observe some of Escher’s works, and then to find the geometry lying behind them. Successively, they were asked to produce new patterns on their own. One point of interest was to observe the reaction of young people to a visual presentation, carrying a strong aesthetic component, of a mathematical problem.
Illustrations by Cécile Ellia (mail: cecile.ellia@mail.polimi.it). The animations from which the pictures are taken are visible on http://www.dm.unibo.it/~ida/simmetrie.htm
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http://www2.polito.it/didattica/polymath/htmlS/argoment/Matematicae/Maggio_05/Escher.htm
http://www.scienceu.com/geometry/articles/tiling/wallpaper.html
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Idà, M., Ellia, C. (2010). Visual Impact and Mathematical Learning. In: Capecchi, V., Buscema, M., Contucci, P., D'Amore, B. (eds) Applications of Mathematics in Models, Artificial Neural Networks and Arts. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8581-8_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8581-8_23
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