How do you tessellate?

Mosaics and irregular tesselations

Originally, tessellation described the process of making mosaics.

The Latin ''tessella'' is a small piece of clay, stone, or glass used to make mosaics.

Many mathematical problems require covering large areas with small shapes with no gaps. The computer-aided engineering (CAD) tool called finite element analysis (FEA) also requires "tesselation" (also called "meshing") -- dividing large, complex shapes into smaller, easy-to-analyze shapes.

regular tesselations

Many artists and mathematicians are fascinated by the problem of covering large areas with no gaps, using one repeating identical shape or a few repeating shapes. There are exactly 17 such wallpaper groups, including the 3 regular tilings.

Fitting together identical shapes. For example a hexagon tessallates.