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Billiards are a class of dynamical systems in which a point particle moves uniformly in a domain $D\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ except for mirror-like reflections from the boundary. Varying $D$ leads to examples satisfying many ergodic properties. Billiards enhance visual explanations of dynamical concepts to students and the general public. There are many applications in physics and image processing. The free motion and/or reflection rule may be generalized.

24 votes

Can every $\mathbb{Z}^2$ disk be pinball-reached?

Douglas Zare's shortest path idea seems to me very well-suited for this. Intuitively, we can view the circles as being rings, and the reflected ray like a rope going through the rings. We pull to obt …
Cristi Stoica's user avatar