Caden Gilbert
Letter to a Friend
5/16/14

Hello Miya,
There are actually several different kinds of transformations. First, there is the “Rotation” where the object is simply turned. Think of it like a clock hand going around on the clock. If it gets from the 12 to the 6, it did a 180o rotation. Next is the Reflection which shows what the object would be either on the x-axis or the y-axis. It is like looking in a mirror. The third kind of transformation is the Translation. All that is happening to a shape when you do this is moving it to another position. It is just like if you were moving a piece of paper aside so you could look at another, as long as you didn’t flip it or do anything else. The final kind of transformation is called dilation. What happens to a shape during this is that it gets either bigger or smaller. Do you remember seeing that “Despicable Me” movie that involved a “Shrink Ray”? This is a example of a dilation that involves something getting smaller.
A tessellation is a pattern of shapes that completely covers the object it is on. Tessellations are everywhere around us, not only in buildings or the floors we walk on, but even in nature. If you ever seen a honeybee comb up close, you would notice that there covered in hexagons.
I believe that the teacher wanted us to look at tessellations just to see what kinds of transformations are used in it. When you use any of the three transformations: reflections, rotations, and translations, the shapes that are