tessellation titillation

 
First of all, thanks to Cindy, Melissa, Anonymous and Lynda for participating. AWESOME and some super funny guesses. =) Lynda was right on. Ding! Ding! Ding!!

 (photo taken by Frank Mikley on 2006-07-23)

Wikipedia has a very thorough treatment of tessellation. Quoth the Wiki:

"A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a collection of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art of M. C. Escher...

In Latin, tessella is a small cubical piece of clay, stone or glass used to make mosaics.[1] The word "tessella" means "small square"...."

The context in which I learned this term was GIS, specifically turning a map of elevation points or lines into a 3-D, continuous surface. The computer does this work so then you have a cool surface to look at as landscape vs. a bunch of unconnected dots of varying height. Much easier to relate to. And more flexible re: data analysis.

Then, wiki went all Nature-y and talked about tessellation in nature. Like honeycombs (continuous surface comprised of hexagons) and: "Basaltic lava flows often display columnar jointing as a result of contraction forces causing cracks as the lava cools. The extensive crack networks that develop often produce hexagonal columns of lava."

One place where such features exist is Devil's Post Pile National Monument (DEPO, in NPS slang), which is not all that far from Yosemite and is part of the NPS Sierra Nevada network of parks (Yosemite, Devil's Post Pile, Sequoia and Kings Canyon).

AND I happened to do some stuff for the network once so ventured to DEPO to get a pic or two, including the above, the example of tessellation in nature which immediately sprung to mind after reading about such phenomena.

Check out the photo at the Devil's Post Pile web site, then imagine (if you've not done it) hiking to the top of that assemblage of columnar basalt and look down at your feet: the above is what you see.

TOO cool. And there's trees growing out of it and everything--freaky! And definitely something you must touch. Smoooooooth.

=)

Anyhow, thanks for coming along with me on this adventure in tessellation.

AWESOME guesses by all, and I know I certainly enjoyed it and learned lots. Here's to following (up on) your dreams!

xoxo

biobabbler

Today's random vocabulary quiz...

 
I woke up with the word "tessellated" repeating over and over in my head this morning. By which I mean, while lying in bed, then standing and shuffling downstairs, here's a moment in my brain: "tessellated tessellated tessellated tessellated tessellated tessellated tessellated tessellated tessellated."

Oh, the fun I have.

=)

I must say, though, it does seem like my brain is trying to rescue my education by shoving these words back at me vs. just straight up deleting them 'cause they're dusty. So, I appreciate that.

Actually, the word "thessellated" was in my head, but during my trip downstairs to sleepily start my day my brain woke up enough to think, "No, I think it's tessellated, whatever it is, not thessellated."


So, what does tessellated mean?


Here's how the quiz works:

1. You DON'T look it up,

2. You guess either by knowing or completely making something up (and comment, pretty please),

3. THEN you may satisfy your curiosity and look it up later (but please don't include THAT answer in your guess) or wait for my answer post, which will be in a few days (to allow folks time to participate).


Your reward is flexing your brain, and being proud of your bravery re: vocab guessing. OR showing off if you know or kinda know. =)


I looked it up and tho' I learned it in a non-biological context, it turns out I have a photograph that shows tessellation in nature, so I'm already psyched about my vocab answer post.

=) Thank you in advance for playing!

biobabbler