Two leading maths organisations, the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust (UKMT) in Leeds, England and the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) in New York City, announced a joint competition to celebrate the discovery of the Hat Tile, an “Einstein” or aperiodic monotile, a shape which can tile the plane but can only do so non-periodically (in a non-repeating pattern).
The famous Penrose tiles are a pair of shapes which together do the same thing, but the Hat Tile is a shape which does the job by itself. See here Aperiodic Monotile for the paper and here for an animation showing that the hat is just one of an infinite family of newly-discovered Einsteins The Hat animation.
This mathematical discovery solves what was commonly believed to be an impossible challenge in patterning. In celebration of this exciting discovery, the UK Mathematics Trust and MoMath are hosting a competition to highlight the creativity of mathematics, the Einstein Mad HAT Contest.
The competition is now open and will run until 11.59pm 15 October 2023 BST. You are invited to submit your renditions of the Hat and Spectre tiles. Submissions highlighting the connections between mathematics, art, design, and catering are encouraged.
All entries must be submitted via Einstein Mad HAT Competitions.
