Related papers: Pach's animal problem within the bounding box
We have proved in this paper that numbers can be expressed in algebraic form using one variable and two real rational quantities and thus sum of three cubes can also be expressed in algebraic form as a cubic polynomial. Using skeletal or…
We solve an infinite family of twisted polynomial problems that are cubic generalizations of Hubbard's twisted rabbit problem. We show how the result of twisting by a power of a certain Dehn twist depends on the 9-adic expansion of the…
We prove that a particular pushing-blocks puzzle is intractable in 3D. The puzzle, inspired by the game PushPush, consists of unit square blocks on an integer lattice. An agent may push blocks (but never pull them) in attempting to move…
An animal is a planar shape formed by attaching congruent regular polygons along their edges. In 1976, Harary and Harborth gave closed isoperimetric formulas for Euclidean animals. Here, we provide analogous formulas for hyperbolic animals.…
We say that a group G is a cube group if it is generated by a set S of involutions such that the corresponding Cayley graph Cay(G,S) is isomorphic to a cube. Equivalently, G is a cube group if it acts on a cube such that the action is…
This paper provides an enjoyable example through which several concepts of classical mechanics can be understood. We introduce an equation that models the motion of a cat in the presence of a person. The cat is considered as a point…
We show that deciding whether a given set of circles can be packed into a rectangle, an equilateral triangle, or a unit square are NP-hard problems, settling the complexity of these natural packing problems. On the positive side, we show…
A cube is an 8-rep-tile: it is the union of eight smaller copies of itself. Is there a set with a hole which has this property? The computer found an interesting and complicated solution, which then could be simplified. We discuss some…
Colored triangulations offer a generalization of combinatorial maps to higher dimensions. Just like maps are gluings of polygons, colored triangulations are built as gluings of special, higher-dimensional building blocks, such as octahedra,…
The particle in a box is a simple model that has a classical Hamiltonian $H=p^2$ (using $2m=1$), with a limited coordinate space, $-b<q<b$, where $0<b<\infty$. Using canonical quantization, this example has been fully studied thanks to its…
This paper proves that push-pull block puzzles in 3D are PSPACE-complete to solve, and push-pull block puzzles in 2D with thin walls are NP-hard to solve, settling an open question by Zubaran and Ritt. Push-pull block puzzles are a type of…
We provide a lower bound construction showing that the union of unit balls in three-dimensional space has quadratic complexity, even if they all contain the origin. This settles a conjecture of Sharir.
This paper deals with the problem of circle packing, in which the largest radii circle is to be fit in a confined space filled with arbitrary circles of different radii and centers. A circle packing problem is one of a variety of cutting…
It is well known that Rubik's cube has a set of group invariants. These values do not change if any layer was rotated, but they can change in case if some of the cubes were removed from the puzzle, mixed up and returned back. In this paper,…
Assembling parts into an object is a combinatorial problem that arises in a variety of contexts in the real world and involves numerous applications in science and engineering. Previous related work tackles limited cases with identical unit…
Many combinatorial problems can be formulated as "Can I transform configuration 1 into configuration 2, if certain transformations only are allowed?". An example of such a question is: given two k-colourings of a graph, can I transform the…
A polynomial transformation of the real plane $\Bbb R^2$ is a mapping $\Bbb R^2\to\Bbb R^2$ given by two polynomials of two variables. Such a transformation is called cubic if the degrees of its polynomials are not greater than three. In…
A rectangular parallelepiped is called a cuboid (standing box). It is called perfect if its edges, face diagonals and body diagonal all have integer length. Euler gave an example where only the body diagonal failed to be an integer (Euler…
Answering a recent question of Patchell and Spiro, we show that when a $d$-dimensional cube of side length $n$ is filled with letters, the word $\mathsf{CAT}$ can appear contiguously at most $(3^{d-1}/2)n^d$ times (allowing diagonals); we…
In a containment problem, the goal is to preprocess a set of geometric objects so that, given a geometric query object, we can report all the objects containing the query object. We consider the containment problem where input objects are…