Question

Which figure will tessellate the plane? A. regular pentagon B. regular decagon C. regular octagon D. regular hexagon

Answer 1

Answer: D. regular hexagon

A hexagon is composed of 6 congruent equilateral triangles. Each equilateral triangle has interior angle of 60 degrees. Adding 6 such angles together gets you to 360 degrees. So we've done one full rotation and covered every bit of the plane surrounding a given point. Extend this out and you'll be able to cover the plane. A similar situation happens with rectangles as well (think of a grid, or think of tiles on the wall or floor)

In contrast, a regular pentagon has interior angle 108 degrees. This is not a factor of 360, so there is no way to place regular pentagons to have them line up and not be a gap or overlap. This is why regular pentagons do not tessellate the plane. The same can be aside about decagons and octagons as well.