Related papers: Wetzel's sector covers unit arcs

Forty years ago Schaer and Wetzel showed that a $\frac{1}{\pi}\times\frac {1}{2\pi}\sqrt{\pi^{2}-4}$ rectangle, whose area is about $0.122\,74,$ is the smallest rectangle that is a cover for the family of all closed unit arcs. More recently…

We improve a lower bound for the smallest area of convex covers for closed unit curves from 0.0975 to 0.1, which makes it substantially closer to the current best upper bound 0.11023. We did this by considering the minimal area of convex…

We combine geometric methods with numerical box search algorithm to show that the minimal area of a convex set on the plane which can cover every closed plane curve of unit length is at least 0.0975. This improves the best previous lower…

We prove some uniqueness results for conics of minimal area that enclose a compact, full-dimensional subset of the elliptic plane. The minimal enclosing conic is unique if its center or axes are prescribed. Moreover, we provide sufficient…

Let n points be placed on a closed convex domain on the plane, no three points on a straight line. A conjecture by H. A. Heilbronn (before 1950) stated that on the convex domain of unit area the smallest triangle defined by these points has…

In 1914 Lebesgue defined a "universal covering" to be a convex subset of the plane that contains an isometric copy of any subset of diameter 1. His challenge of finding a universal covering with the least possible area has been addressed by…

We prove a long standing conjecture concerning the fencing problem in the plane: among planar convex sets of given area, prove that the disc, and only the disc maximizes the length of the shortest area-bisecting curve. Although it may look…

Moser asked whether the collection of rectangles of dimensions 1 x 1/2, 1/2 x 1/3, 1/3 x 1/4, ..., whose total area equals 1, can be packed into the unit square without overlap, and whether the collection of squares of side lengths 1/2,…

In this paper, we provide a lower bound for an area of the convex hull of points and a rectangle in a plane. We then apply this estimate to establish a lower bound for a universal cover problem. We showed that a convex universal cover for a…

A covering problem posed by Henri Lebesgue in 1914 seeks to find the convex shape of smallest area that contains a subset congruent to any point set of unit diameter in the Euclidean plane. Methods used previously to construct such a…

The smallest enclosing circle problem asks for the circle of smallest radius enclosing a given set of finite points on the plane. This problem was introduced in the 19th century by Sylvester [17]. After more than a century, the problem…

We show that every planar convex body is contained in a quadrangle whose area is less than $(1 - 2.6 \cdot 10^{-7}) \sqrt{2}$ times the area of the original convex body, improving the best known upper bound by W. Kuperberg.

In this article we consider the isoperimetric problem for partitioning the plane into three disjoint domains, one having unit area and the remaining two having infinite area. We show that the only solution, up to rigid motions of the plane,…

Let $P_{n}$ be a set of $n$ points, including the origin, in the unit square $U = [0,1]^2$. We consider the problem of constructing $n$ axis-parallel and mutually disjoint rectangles inside $U$ such that the bottom-left corner of each…

We show that any convex region which contains a unit segment, an equilateral triangle of sides 1/2, and a square of side 1/3 always has area at least 0.227498. Using grid-search algorithm, we attempt to find a configuration of these three…

Given a set of line segments in the plane, not necessarily finite, what is a convex region of smallest area that contains a translate of each input segment? This question can be seen as a generalization of Kakeya's problem of finding a…

A zone of width $\omega$ on the unit sphere is the set of points within spherical distance $\omega/2$ of a given great circle. We show that the total width of any collection of zones covering the unit sphere is at least $\pi$, answering a…

The problem of finding small sets that block every line passing through a unit square was first considered by Mazurkiewicz in 1916. We call such a set {\em opaque} or a {\em barrier} for the square. The shortest known barrier has length…

Lebesgue's universal covering problem is re-examined using computational methods. This leads to conjectures about the nature of the solution which if correct could provide a blueprint for a complete solution. Empirical lower bounds for the…

Quantitative estimates related to the classical Borsuk problem of splitting set in Euclidean space into subsets of smaller diameter are considered. For a given $k$ there is a minimal diameter of subsets at which there exists a covering with…