Bridges 2012 Short Paper

The study of abstract groups is a challenging one for many undergraduate students. In this paper, we present an overview of a geometric context which can help students interpret and understand the structure of cyclic groups, as well as gain a broader conceptual understanding of such central ideas as subgroups and cosets. The authentic artistic context of star polygons can both motivate students to persist in a search for patterns and provide a concrete referent from which students can generalize algebraic ideas.