On this page you will find links to some interactive puzzles that may help you to understand structure of geometric patterns in Islamic art or in any other polygonal art. All these tools were created using Geometer’s Sketchpad 5 and Web Sketchpad (at the moment an experimental utility of McGraw Hill Education). How they work? Here is a brief example.
The picture shows a screen of a typical puzzle. On the left side we have our tools. After selecting a tool (of course with mouse pointer) the right figure will pop up on the screen. Now you have to attach the two blinking points to the appropriate points on your design. That is all. The arrows can be used to undo the operation or put it back in place. The rest is just a matter of practice.
List of GSP puzzles (it will be expanded in the future)
- Octagons and squares – I used this tool to illustrate how patterns based on regular octagon and square may work (see the picture above).
- Sultan Ahmed – this is one of the first puzzles that I made in web Sketchpad. It is based on the original floor on the entrance to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque courtyard.
- Pattern from Amasya – Here is a puzzle to model pattern on a doors from Amasya. This is very simple puzzle using only four polygons – regular decagon, regular pentagon, rhombus and elongated pentagon.
- Archimedean tiles – collection of tiles allowing experiments with tiling the plane with regular polygons. We can use this tool to construct 11 Archimedean tilings, 2-uniform tilings, some tilings from Kepler’s book Harmonices Mundi, etc.
- Kukaldosh Madrasa mini — mini set for designing kundekari patterns. This is really mini-set. I created it as an illustration for the third chapter of my book SZKICE o GEOMETRII i SZTUCE: gereh – geometria w sztuce islamu.
- Ribbon Patterns Toolbox — a toolbox for designing ribbon patterns for my paper onRibbon Patterns with Geometry Software.
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