Malfatti's Problem
Malfatti's problem is to carve three cylinders from a triangular block of marble, using as much of the marble as possible. In 1803, Gian Francesco Malfatti conjectured that the solution would be obtained by inscribing three mutually tangent circles into the triangle (a problem that had previously been considered by Japanese mathematician Ajima Naonobu); these circles are now known as the Malfatti circles, although the conjecture has been proven to be false.
Read more about this topic: Tangent Circles
Famous quotes containing the word problem:
“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.”
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