Math Art Project - The Magic Path

Our math art project was based on Margaret Kepner's A Magic Knight's Tour. A knight's tour is a path that visits each cell of the 8 by 8 chessboard once in knight's moves. All the moves are connected with black lines, and we can see that it is a closed magic path, where a starting point can also be an ending point. Observing Kepner's art, we realized that the inner squares change colour every move in a specific order. As there are 8 colours that were used, the colours keep changing, and the sequence repeats after the 8 colours. The background colour also changes. The first 8 outer squares - the first colour being red since the small black circle is the starting point of the path as described - are red, the second 8 are orange, the third 8 are yellow, etc. The colour black is used when the inner shape's colour matches the outer square's colour. In this way, there are a lot of interesting patterns that have been embodied in Kepner's art.

It was at first not easy to understand the meaning of the different colours and shapes. I thought it was a bit boring to interpret it because it is art. However, after a few tries, we could decode it and understand the math behind it. The project overall let me explore how math and art could be combined and turned to such an interesting piece of art. It was a fun learning experience linking math to art and recreating our own piece of art. I think it will definitely inspire my future lessons.