Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Playing with Colors

Empire Star

I've been playing with the Empire Star block and the basic unit it is made from. On 30 March 2010, by reflecting the basic unit different ways I found 3 new blocks. On 31 March 2010 I rotated the basic unit different ways and found 4 new blocks.


What if I try coloring Empire Star different ways? Can I find more new blocks?

 








There are a lot of different ways I can color the Empire Star block to create different blocks. I'm not impressed by the ones I've created here. They're not the sort of blocks you expect to see in anybody's block collection.

I think the problem is a lack of obvious symmetry.  We are used to blocks that are the same right side up or up side down; blocks that you can turn and they still look the same in any position.  The Empire Star block, even though  it has reflected symmetry, lacks rotational symmetry. My coloring helped disguise what little symmetry there was.

For more ideas on playing with block colors go to My Posts by Subject in the sidebar on the right and click on Colors

2 comments:

  1. Wayne, I sort of like the black and red one and the purple and green one. I wonder how they'd look if you put a bunch of them together. Sometimes you get secondary designs out of it. Still enjoying your thought processes!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stephanie

    Your thought process seems to be parallelling my own. You have provided the perfect lead-in to tomorrow's post by asking, "What if you put a bunch of them together?"

    ReplyDelete