Related papers: On Perles' configuration
It is an amazing and a bit counter-intuitive discovery by Micha Perles from the sixties that there are ``non-rational polytopes'': combinatorial types of convex polytopes that cannot be realized with rational vertex coordinates. We describe…
In 1989, Erd\H{o}s conjectured that for a sufficiently large $n$ it is impossible to place $n$ points in general position in a plane such that for every $1\le i \le n-1$ there is a distance that occurs exactly $i$ times. For small $n$ this…
We investigate small geometric configurations that furnish observable-based proofs of the Kochen-Specker theorem. Assuming that each context consists of the same number of observables and each observable is shared by two contexts, it is…
We give a new simple geometric proof that any seven points in the plane have four Tverberg partitions into three sets. This is the only confirmed non-trivial case of Sierksma's conjecture. Earlier proofs, by Stephan Hell, relied on…
In their solution to the orchard-planting problem, Green and Tao established a structure theorem which proves that in a line arrangement in the real projective plane with few double points, most lines are tangent to the dual curve of a…
How can we arrange $n$ lines through the origin in three-dimensional Euclidean space in a way that maximizes the minimum interior angle between pairs of lines? Conway, Hardin and Sloane (1996) produced line packings for $n \leq 55$ that…
We study relations between $(n_4)$ incidence configurations and the classical Poncelet Porism. Poncelet's result studies two conics and a sequence of points and lines that inscribes one conic and circumscribes the other. Poncelet's Porism…
We compute all isomorphism classes of simplicial arrangements in the real projective plane with up to 27 lines. It turns out that Gr\"unbaums catalogue is complete up to 27 lines except for four new arrangements with 22, 23, 24, 25 lines,…
Richard Guy asked for the largest set of points which can be placed in the plane so that their pairwise distances are rational numbers. In this article, we consider such a set of rational points restricted to a given hyperbola. To be…
We give some new explicit examples of putatively optimal projective spherical designs. i.e., ones for which there is numerical evidence that they are of minimal size. These form continuous families, and so have little apparent symmetry in…
In 1992, Brehm and K\"uhnel constructed a 8-dimensional simplicial complex $M^8_{15}$ with 15 vertices as a candidate to be a minimal triangulation of the quaternionic projective plane. They managed to prove that it is a manifold "like a…
Carsten Thomassen in 1989 conjectured that if a graph has minimum degree more than the number of atoms in the universe ($\delta(G)\ge 10^{10^{10}}$), then it contains a pillar, which is a graph that consists of two vertex-disjoint cycles of…
A long-standing open conjecture of Branko Gr\"unbaum from 1972 states that any simple arrangement of $n$ pairwise intersecting pseudocircles in the plane can have at most $2n-2$ digons. Agarwal et al. proved this conjecture for arrangements…
We study the reciprocal position of nine points in the plane, according to their collinearities. In particular, we consider the case in which the nine points are contained in an irreducible cubic curve and we give their classification. If…
Any stretching of Ringel's non-Pappus pseudoline arrangement when projected into the Euclidean plane, implicitly contains a particular arrangement of nine triangles. This arrangement has a complex constraint involving the sines of its…
Projection methods are popular algorithms for iteratively solving feasibility problems in Euclidean or even Hilbert spaces. They employ (selections of) nearest point mappings to generate sequences that are designed to approximate a point in…
In this paper we report on massive computer experiments aimed at finding spherical point configurations that minimize potential energy. We present experimental evidence for two new universal optima (consisting of 40 points in 10 dimensions…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, its separability is the minimum number of lines needed to separate all its pairs of points from each other. We show that the minimum number of lines needed to separate $n$ points, picked randomly…
We study the smallest possible number of points in a topological space having k open sets. Equivalently, this is the smallest possible number of elements in a poset having k order ideals. Using efficient algorithms for constructing a…
In this note we consider two configurations of twelve lines with nineteen triple points (i.e., points where three lines meet). Both of them have the same combinatorial features. In both configurations nine of twelve lines have five triple…