Somehow, I’ve been awarded the MEGA grant, from Matt Parker and Talking Maths in Public, for a ridiculous public maths project. I’d better get on that, then!

My plan is to go to the beach and use great big cookie cutters in the shape of the spectre aperiodic monotile to cover as much space as possible.

Here’s a video I made describing the idea:

It’s still very early in the planning stages – I need to work out how to make the stampers, and parallel to that, someone needs to organise getting a load of people to a beach (shot not me – that’s why I wanted the grant).

The project is currently in the early planning stage. Once we’ve picked a time and a place, we’ll be looking for volunteers to come down to the beach and do some aperiodic tiling, and talk to the public about what we’re doing. If you’re interested in being involved, join the ridiculous maths project volunteer mailing list, and we’ll contact you when we’re looking for people.

Because of the unique way my brain works, I did an update video before that announcement video, so I’d better post that here too!

The interactive thing I made to practise doing the tiling is online at beach-spectre-practise.think.somethingorotherwhatever.com. It doesn’t explain itself very well at the moment, but give it a go – it’s especially fun if you try it on your phone!

As work progresses, I’ll try to post more updates here and on my YouTube channel.