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Upper bounds for minimum angle

What are the latest and best results on the asymptotic upper bound for the minimum angle between any pair of rays among $n$ rays in $\mathbb{R}^3$? Any helpful answer would be appreciated. Thank you!
Don's user avatar
  • 61
15 votes
1 answer
530 views

Dividing a polyhedron into two similar copies

The paper Dividing a polygon into two similar polygons proves that there are only three families of polygons that are irrep-2-tiles (can be subdivided into similar copies of the original). Right ...
Kepler's Triangle's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
403 views

Smallest sphere containing three tetrahedra?

What is the smallest possible radius of a sphere which contains 3 identical plastic tetrahedra with side length 1?
trionyx's user avatar
  • 111
6 votes
1 answer
435 views

On the aperiodic monotile

One of the more mind-boggling aspects of the Penrose tiles is that there are uncountably many distinct tilings of the plane, but every tiling contains every finite region that appears in another ...
Jim Conant's user avatar
  • 4,898
14 votes
1 answer
280 views

How many distances are required to calculate all distances among $n$ points in the Euclidean plane?

I want to know all the pairwise distances between points $P_1,P_2,\ldots,P_n$ in the Euclidean plane (or equivalently, I want to reconstruct the set of points up to congruence). Let's say I have an ...
tuna's user avatar
  • 523
88 votes
2 answers
7k views

Light reflecting off Christmas-tree balls

...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
96 views

A 'natural' enumerable metric space with integral distances which is essentially the Euclidean space

It is easy to construct a metric space $E_d$ such that all points of $E_d$ are at mutually integral distance and such that there is a map $\varphi$ from $E_d$ into the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space ...
Roland Bacher's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
667 views

Total length of a set with the same projections as a square

Take some convex polygon $P$. I'm mostly asking about the unit square, but would also appreciate thoughts on general polygons. We want to take a family of line segments inside $P$ that have the same ...
Sam Zbarsky's user avatar
  • 1,160
5 votes
0 answers
235 views

Arrangement of points, lines, and planes

Is it possible to construct a finite nontrivial arrangement of points, lines, and planes in 3-dimensional Euclidean space with the following properties? every line is incident with four points and ...
Daniel Sebald's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
363 views

Trade-off between hypervolume and diameter of $d$-dimensional shapes having a hypercubic smallest bounding box

Given any $d$-dimensional shape $X$, let $V(X)$ be its $d$-dimensional volume, and let $\ell(X)$ be the length of the longest line segment connecting two points of $X$. Let $\mathcal{S}_C$ be the set ...
Penelope Benenati's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
313 views

Trade-off between covering number, ball radius and diameter of $d$-dimensional shapes

Given any $d$-dimensional shape $X$ in the Euclidean space, let $\ell(X)$ be the length of the longest line segment connecting two points of $X$. How can we prove the following statement? There exists ...
Penelope Benenati's user avatar
24 votes
3 answers
1k views

Tetrahedron insphere iteration

I know that iterating the following incircle construction approaches an equilateral triangle in the limit:       Starting with any triangle $T$, one forms $T'$ by connecting ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
60 views

A canonical map from a Euclidean cone-manifold $M^3$ to $\mathbb{E}^3/\mathrm{Hol}(M)$

Suppose we have a 3-dimensional Euclidean cone-manifold $M$—in my book that just means $M$ is a manifold whose geometry is constructed by gluing it out of Euclidean tetrahedra, with faces paired by ...
Tom Sharpe's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
838 views

Ratio of circumscribed/inscribed $(n{-}1)$-gons

As a discrete analog of the MO question, "Löwner-John Ellipsoid: incribed and circumscribed," I've been wondering what might be the maximum ratio of this quantity? Let $P$ be a convex ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
0 answers
731 views

Does every connected set that is not a line segment cross some dyadic square?

A dyadic square is a subset of $R^2$ of the form $x + 2^{-n} [0,1]^2$ with $x \in 2^{-m} Z^2$, for integers $m,n \geq 0$. We say that a set $A$ crosses a square $S$ if there exists a connected subset ...
Kevin Johnson's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
525 views

Mutually tangent ellipsoids in 3 space

I recently heard a claim that for any n, it is possible to arrange n ellipsoids in 3 space such that each pair of ellipsoids is kissing. Is this true, and if so, how? Edit: By kissing, I mean that I ...
Linda Brown Westrick's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
530 views

Inside-out polygonal dissections

A dissection of a polygon $P$ is a partition of $P$ into a finite number of pieces, which can then be rearranged (via planar translations and rotations) and joined (without overlap) to form a new ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
371 views

Are angles between points enough to decide the realizability?

Let n points in the plane be given whose coordinates we don't know. Assume, however, that for any triple of the points we know the angle. Question: Can we decide whether the n points are realizable ...
Jae's user avatar
  • 245
3 votes
0 answers
214 views

Volume of intersection of a ball and cube with arbitrary position in $n$ dimension

Let $ A(n, r, x) = B^n_r(x) \cap [0,1]^n $ denote the intersection between an $n$ ball $B^n_r(x)$ with arbitrary radius $r$ and arbitrary center $x \in \mathbb{R}^n$ that intersects a unit $n$ cube $ [...
random_shape's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
163 views

Maximum possible number of similar three-colored triangles

I want to maximize the number of similar triangles with vertices from three fixed sets, one vertex from each set. For example, if you fix two points $X$, $Y$ (i.e. two sets with only one member), then ...
Morteza's user avatar
  • 628
6 votes
1 answer
767 views

Using mirrors to make a non-convex polygon visible from a fixed interior point

Take a point $A$ inside a non-convex polygon $P$. Is it always possible to place a finite set of mirrors given by straight segments (not necessarily along the boundary of $P$, any position inside $P$ ...
Roland Bacher's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
712 views

Polygons uniquely inducing arrangements

A beautiful, relatively recent result is that, Every simple arrangement $\cal{A}$ of $n$ lines in the plane is induced by a simple $n$-gon $P$. In a simple arrangement, every pair of lines intersect ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
640 views

Smallest regular simplex containing the unit cube in $R^n$

What is the length $e_n$ of the edge of the smallest $n$-dimensional regular simplex $S_n$ containing the $n$-dimensional unit cube $Q_n$? In particular, is there $n$ such that $e_n<\sqrt{2}(n+1-\...
Jan Kyncl's user avatar
  • 6,101
10 votes
0 answers
1k views

Interpolating points with minimum curvature constraint

I have $n$ points $p_i$ strictly interior to a rectangle $R$, and I would like to connect them with a curve $C$ whose curvature is as low as possible. Let $\kappa_\max(C)$ be the sharpest (largest ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
484 views

Which values can attain the minimum solid angle in a simplex

Given a simplex $S$ with a vertex $v$ by the solid angle at this vertex I mean the value $\hbox{vol}(B \cap S)/\hbox{vol}(B)$ where $B$ is a small enough ball centered at $v$ (for example, in the ...
Martin Tancer's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
197 views

Three-dimensional Apollonian spirals

Given mutually (externally) tangent spheres $S_1$, $S_2$, $S_3$, $S_4$, let $S_n$ be the unique sphere externally tangent to $S_{n-1}$, $S_{n-2}$, $S_{n-3}$, and $S_{n-4}$ for $n \geq 5$. Let $P_{\...
James Propp's user avatar
  • 19.7k