P6m. Not my favourite. Actually, it’s at the bottom of my list in symmetry groups. But, you gotta do what you gotta do. Every symmetry group studied and used for a few good tessellations. The one I’ve done before, that I truly like, is the Notched Louis Cubes (5th one down on that page). There’s not much you can place inside a sliver of a triangle, twelve repeats inside a hexagon, and have it make sense. Easy to do 12 point mandalas, but these are not tessellations in my book.

This tessellation originally started as an idea, in 2013, to do a bunch of people around a trampoline. This week, all worked out well to complete the drawing, but I changed the trampoline into a Browder Life Safety Net. The only time we’ve seen those used are in cartoons, or silent movies, when the damsel in distress jumps out the window of a burning building and lands in a bedsheet, held by a circle of firefighters. The nets worked well, if used according to their design. Which was rarely.

The Wikipedia entry has quite a few stories about its use, misuse, and demise. Missing the net and landing/killing the people holding the net. Throwing your possessions down into the net, then landing on top of them and injuring yourself. Jumping a whole bunch of people together holding hands, and going right through the net… But it did save quite a few lives. They stopped using them in the sixties. The Browder Life Safety Net has since been replaced with ladder trucks and massive inflated mattresses.

The question remains. How many people does it take to hold up a Browder Life Safety Net? I’ve extracted one net and the crowd of people around it for your perusal. Of course, this is complete fantasy on my part, and unrealistic.

Cheers, Francine

A few period images and photos of the old net in action

Below is the 137 foot ladder truck, that’s the equivalent of 12 stories up. Nobody would want to jump that height onto a tiny red dot in the middle of a net, surrounded by asphalt. Ouch.