EQUATIONS
E-ISSN: 2944-9146 An Open Access International Journal of Mathematical and Computational Methods in Science and Engineering
Volume 3, 2023
The Number of Fillings a 2×2×n prism with 1×1×2 prisms
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Abstract: This paper is inspired by very interesting YouTube video of Burkard Polster, professor of mathematics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, which, among other things, concerned the number of ways to fill a part of the plane with dominoes, i.e. 1×2 rectangles. First we deal with the numbers of fillings the 2×2×n prism with elementary 1×1×2 prisms for n=1,2,3,4,5. Special symbolism and figures showing the filling of the prism are used as well as the concept of matching from graph theory and the corresponding graph diagrams. Then we generalize these specific considerations and derive a general recurrence formula for any n≥3, which expresses the number of fillings of the 2×2×n prism with 1×1×2 elementary prisms, which in a way can be considered as spatial domino cubes, if we do not consider their marking with pairs of numbers from 0 to 6.
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Keywords: prism filling, elementary prism, heuristic search, domino, recurrence formula, enumeration
Pages: 104-114
DOI: 10.37394/232021.2023.3.12