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23 votes
3 answers
3k views

Trapped rays bouncing between two convex bodies

At some point during my research I was confronted with this problem, but I did not dedicate serious time to it. Anyway it stayed in the back of my mind and I'm still interested in hints for it. ...
Piero D'Ancona's user avatar
90 votes
5 answers
4k views

Does this property characterize straight lines in the plane?

Take a plane curve $\gamma$ and a disk of fixed radius whose center moves along $\gamma$. Suppose that $\gamma$ always cuts the disk in two simply connected regions of equal area. Is it true that $\...
Alessandro Della Corte's user avatar
19 votes
5 answers
1k views

Lightray trapped between two mirror disks: Computation formulation?

I would like to calculate the angle of a ray $r$ from a given point $p$ such that it gets "stuck" reflecting between two congruent mirror-disks. For why there is such a ray, see the (amazing!) answer ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
565 views

Geometry of Level sets of elliptic polynomials in two real variables

Updated: A polynomial $P(x,y)\in \mathbb{R}[x,y]$ is called an elliptic polynomial if its last homogeneous part does not vanish on $\mathbb{R}^2\setminus\{0\}$.The two answers to this post provide a ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
1k views

Boundary of an open, bounded and convex set in $\mathbb{R} ^n$

Let $U$ be an open, bounded and convex set in $\mathbb{R} ^n$. Since $\partial U$ is a rectifiable set it follows that up to a set of $H^{n-1}$-measure zero $\partial U$ is contained in a countable ...
The Convex Man's user avatar