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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
7 votes
3 answers
377 views

Expected minimum face angle of random convex polyhedron in $\mathbb{R}^3$

Let $P_n$ be a "random convex polyhedron" in $\mathbb{R}^3$ of $n$ vertices, where "random" could follow any one of a number of models: (1) the convex hull of $n$ points randomly and uniformly ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
2k views

Delaunay triangulations and convex hulls

This is a reference request. I have the impression that those who work in computational geometry are accustomed to the following. You have some locally finite set of sites in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and you ...
Michael Hardy's user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
2k views

Point sets in Euclidean space with a small number of distinct distances

It is well known and not hard to prove that the regular simplex in n-dimensions is the only way to place n+1 points so that the distance between distinct pairs of points is always the same. My general ...
Edmund Harriss's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
885 views

Maximal tetrahedra inscribed in ellipsoid

Pietro Majer quoted the theorem of Michel Chasles in his MO question, "Convex curves with many inscribed triangles maximizing perimeter," which states that the triangles of maximum perimeter inscribed ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
1k views

Average degree of contact graph for balls in a box

Imagine you dump congruent, hard, frictionless balls in a box, letting gravity compress the balls into a stable configuration (I believe such configurations are called jammed.) Assume the box ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
1k views

Random polycube shapes

I am wondering if it is hopeless to obtain any firm results on the following model of a "random polycube shape." First, a polycube in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is a connected face-to-face gluing of unit cubes. (...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
737 views

Tiling survey that updates "Tilings and patterns"?

Can anyone suggest a survey (or surveys) that provides an update to Tilings and patterns by Grunbaum and Shepard? If there's a more recent book, that would be fantastic, but I don't see one. I am ...
Aaron Sterling's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
930 views

What is determined by the combinatorics of the shadows of a convex polyhedron?

Define the shadow of a convex polyhedron $P$ in direction $u$ to be the orthogonal projection of $P$ onto a plane whose normal is $u$. The shadow is a convex $k$-gon. I am wondering to what degree $P$ ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
358 views

Coloring toroidal polyhedra with convex faces?

Consider a toroidal polyhedron, which is a topological torus, in which all faces are planar, two faces meet in at most an edge, and adjacent faces are not coplanar. The Szilassi polyhedron has 7 non-...
Leah Wrenn Berman's user avatar
45 votes
1 answer
2k views

Pach's "Animals": What if the genus is positive?

Janos Pach asked a deep question 23 years ago (1988) that remains unsolved today: Can every animal—a topological ball in $\mathbb{R^3}$ composed of unit cubes glued face-to-face—be ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
1k views

Forbidden mirror sequences

Let $\cal{M}$ be a finite collection of two-sided mirrors, each an open unit-length segment in $\mathbb{R^2}$, and such that the segments when closed are disjoint. A ray of light that reflects off the ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
21 votes
5 answers
1k views

Is a rhombus rigid on a sphere or torus? And generalizations

If a rectangle is formed from rigid bars for edges and joints at vertices, then it is flexible in the plane: it can flex to a parallelogram. On any smooth surface with a metric, one can define a ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
938 views

Which knots' stick numbers are twice their crossing numbers?

Looking at a table of minimum stick numbers for knots (table here), it seems the known upper bound of $2 c(K)$ in terms of the knot crossing number $c(K)$ is realized by the trefoil $3_1$—it ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
1k views

Which (semi)regular polyhedra are combinations of two others?

The convex combination of convex polytopes is a convex polytope. An example in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is that a regular octagon can be obtained as $\frac{1}{2} S + \frac{1}{2} S'$, where $S$ is a square and $...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar

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