Tangram

The Tangram (in Chinese: 七巧板; Pinyin: qī qiǎo bǎn, Lagging-Gilles: ch' I ch' CAE side), “seven boards of the trick”, or play of the seven parts, is an old play of recluse Chinese.

The origin of the word “tangram” seems to be Western: it would be composed of “tang”, meaning “Chinese” in Cantonese, and of “gram”, pointing out the drawn character of the figures.

The age of the play of Tangram, called in Chinese “Tchi' I Tchi' CAE side”, “the plate of wisdom” or “the plate with the seven easy ways” is not known, but it seems to go back to the high antiquity. The first known works describing it go back to the end of the 18th century.

Description

It is composed of seven parts which can be juxtaposed to form a square:

It will be noticed that the small triangle is the basic unit of cutting, the total surface of Tangram is 16 times his surface, the diagonal of the great square is 4 times the measurement on the lateral sides of the small triangle, his side, 2 times the base or 4 times the median of the base of the small triangle.

Use

It can be used in two different ways:
  • like headache;
  • like material of evaluation of flexibility, fluidity and the creative originality.

Headache

In this function headache, the goal of the play is to reproduce a given form, generally selected in a collection of models. The rules are simple: one always uses totality parts which must be posed flat and not to superimpose .

The models are very numerous, one indexes some almost: 2000 of which some extremely difficult. One can classify them in two categories: geometrical models and figurative models.

A great number of geometrical figures can be reproduced, but some are very representative of the mathematical and geometrical reports/ratios binding the various elements. A reflection on certain figures makes it possible to deduce some from the geometrical theorems in a visual way.

The evaluation of the Creativity

The tangram can also be employed to easily evaluate the imaginative creativity of an individual and its three key components:
  • the number of topics different (house, animals, characters, etc) which it approaches makes it possible to appreciate its creative Flexibilité;
  • the number of figures which he imagines or finds for each topic, its creative Fluidité;
  • the compared frequency of its productions with the frequencies of a group of reference its creative Originality.

External bonds

  • Tanzzle 1,000,000,000 of the silhouettes
  • a free software of Tangram
  • a Community site of Tangram in line
  • a description written in 1817 (on Gallica)
  • Play on line with Tangram d' Even Rouault Possibité to download it and create its own silhouettes.
  • Tangramagicus Site with new images, stories and plays on the tangram.
  • a play of Tangram for PalmOS

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