The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to tile a bathroom floor, square tiles are the simplest option—they fit together without any gaps in a grid pattern that can ...

Creatively tiling a bathroom floor isn’t just a stressful task for DIY home renovators. It is also one of the hardest problems in mathematics. For centuries, experts have been studying the special ...

It’s been just months since researchers reported the first “einstein” — a single tile that can cover an infinite plane, but only with a pattern that never repeats (SN: 3/24/23). Now, the same team has ...

Infinitely many copies of a 13-sided shape can be arranged with no overlaps or gaps in a pattern that never repeats. David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss (CC BY ...

The surprisingly simple tile is the first single, connected tile that can fill the entire plane in a pattern that never repeats — and can’t be made to fill it in a repeating way. In mid-November of ...

Ever wanted an actual one-of-a-kind bathroom or kitchen? Well, mathematicians have found the perfect tile for you. A team from the University of Arkansas have discovered the first shape that can cover ...

A new 13-sided shape is the first example of an elusive "einstein" — a single shape that can be tiled infinitely without repeating a pattern. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

Mathematicians solved a decades-long mystery earlier this year when they discovered a shape that can cover a surface completely without ever creating a repeating pattern. But the breakthrough had come ...

For centuries, mathematicians and floor designers alike have been fascinated by the shapes that can tile a plane — in particular, those that do so without repetition. Now, a team of chemists has ...

If you want to tile a bathroom floor, square tiles are the simplest option — they fit together without any gaps in a grid pattern that can continue indefinitely. That square grid has a property shared ...