Comment by shoxidizer
9 hours ago
> Does it mean simply lack of pattern? But that doesn't seem to be the case, at least visually.
Aperiodic tiling means that the whole thing doesn't repeat. If you overlay a copy of the tiling and move it around, you'll never find it match perfectly everywhere except for the one position you cloned it as. A grid of squares is periodic, you can translate it one unit to the side and it's the exact same, everywhere.
This is of course a different kind of periodic than is meant with The Periodic Table.
It seems to be the same kind of periodicity unless I'm missing something.
> Periodicity, for our purposes, is a repetition of relationships in specific intervals. Mendeleev had found that the elements were periodic based on the relationship between atomic weight and valency.
(from parent link)
Yeah, they're both about periodic repetition. But a periodic tiling repeats in its entirety, exactly, with a fixed period. The periodic table groups elements based on properties that repeat periodically, but the periods change as you move down the table. The tiling also has string of repeating patterns, like the elements, but a periodic tiling is something other than just that.
> but the periods change as you move down the table
Sounds like the periodic table is already aperiodic.
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