English

Where have all the grasshoppers gone?

Combinatorics 2023-05-09 v2

Abstract

Let PP be an NN-element point set in the plane. Consider NN (pointlike) grasshoppers sitting at different points of PP. In a "legal" move, any one of them can jump over another, and land on its other side at exactly the same distance. After a finite number of legal moves, can the grasshoppers end up at a point set, similar to, but larger than PP? We present a linear algebraic approach to answer this question. In particular, we solve a problem of Brunck by showing that the answer is yes if PP is the vertex set of a regular NN-gon and N3,4,6N\neq 3, 4, 6. Some generalizations are also considered.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.03870,
  title  = {Where have all the grasshoppers gone?},
  author = {János Pach and Gábor Tardos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.03870},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

11 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:22:20.106Z