English

Edge Tessellation and Stamp Foldings Puzzles

Geometric Topology 2011-08-31 v4 Combinatorics

Abstract

An edge tessellation is a tiling of the plane generated by reflecting a polygon in its edges. We prove that a polygon generating an edge tessellation is one the following eight types: a rectangle; an equilateral, 60-right, isosceles right, or 120-isosceles triangle; a 120-rhombus; a 60-90-120 kite; or a regular hexagon. A stamp folding puzzle is a paper folding problem constrained to the perforations on a sheet of postage stamps. We establish the following conjecture due to G. Frederickson: "Although triangular stamps have come in a variety of different triangular shapes, only three shapes seem suitable for [stamp] folding puzzles: equilateral, isosceles right triangles, and 60-right triangles."

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0908.3257,
  title  = {Edge Tessellation and Stamp Foldings Puzzles},
  author = {Matthew Kirby and Ron Umble},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.3257},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

7 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:38:03.451Z