Tiling the pentagon (Q1574582)

The authors investigate several possibilities to dissect a convex pentagon into smaller pentagons. In Theorem 1, they show that a convex pentagon \(P\) can always be dissected into \(n\) pentagons which form an edge-to-edge tiling of \(P\), for any \(n\geq 6\). An edge-to-edge tiling of a pentagon \(P\) is called cubic if every vertex of the tiling has valence three or is a corner point of \(P\). In Theorem 2, it is shown that there exist infinitely many \(n\geq 6\) such that a convex pentagon \(P\) has a cubic edge-to-edge tiling with \(n\) convex pentagonal tiles. Both theorems are proved by explicit construction of dissection for \(n\leq 16\) and then using simple rules to produce from this finite list further examples. The last theorem of the paper deals with equiangular tilings: A tiling of the pentagon \(P\) by pentagons is called equiangular if for each tile there is a correspondence between the angles of the tile and those of \(P\), each taken in the clockwise cyclic order. Theorem 3 states that there is no cubic equiangular tiling of the pentagon. The proof is a careful case-by-case analysis. The exact definition of equiangularity is crucial for that. If one forgets the cyclic order or considers only the type (acute/obtuse) of the angle, then there are examples.