Tiles to Tangles

This is an interactive program to produce elaborate knots by using a tiling of the plane and assigning to each tile a "tangle", or a simple over or undercrossing. Here is an example of what can be done with a specific tiling (the Penrose tiling):

By choosing the tiling appropriately and by using the corrent rules of assigning tangles to tiles, many complex motifs may be easily produced.

This computer program is under development. We see it running at a dedicated computer, unattended. The program will be simple enough to require little or no instructions.

Interactive Braiding Exercises

People are often amazed that you can add quantities that aren't numbers. This activity may be combined with the KnotPlot one below, since KnotPlot is already capable of generating the braids needed.

Please see the (unfinished) braid page at the KnotPlot site to get an idea of the kind of visual image a visitor would see.

Hands-on KnotPlot

We plan to have one computer devoted to hand-on activities using KnotPlot. In it's current state, KnotPlot can easily be used by even very young people (under five years) after only a little instruction. With suitable enhancements, KnotPlot should function well as a completely stand-alone (that is, not attended by a musuem staff member) facility.

Our observation has been that people enjoy playing with KnotPlot, trying to foil it's ability to untie complex unknots, and so forth. We have seen children play with KnotPlot (in lieu of computer games that existed on the same computer) for over an hour.