Tangram, 七巧板, Recreational math, Pedagogy

Last crawled date: 6 years, 1 month ago

The Tangram, known as “七巧板,” is “a Chinese puzzle made by cutting a square of thin material into five triangles, a square, and a rhomboid which are capable of being recombined in many different figures” (Merriam Webster). Simple as it is, it has been used in recreational and formal mathematics for centuries, affording students of all ages meaningful and surprising mathematical explorations and insights. Today, one can design much more complicated puzzles in a tangram style. However, the original tangram set holds its aesthetic appeal.

The Tangram can be used as an introductory 3D design project with Fusion 360 or any other 3D design software: parameters, sketches, basic constraints, extrusion, and 3D navigation. I added a little variety to the designs using “offsets,” “circles,” and “fillets,” just to make it more personal. It would be great for students to design their own Tangram and then use them to explore its mathematical structures from shapes to proportions.

Here, the big square is 100mm by 100mm, with two choices for thickness, 3mm and 4mm.

References

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tangram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram
Read, R. C. (1965). Trangrams: 330 puzzles. Dover Recreational Math. Dover Publications.
http://www.archimedes-lab.org/tangramagicus/pagetang1.html