plane colouring
Back in the days before smart phones with GPS functions became ubiquitous we had maps. Remember how hard it was to fold them? Mathematicians feel your pain; they have struggled with map folding problems for generations. But a recent insight by a maths student suggests there might be another way to approach these problems, one that makes an unlikely connection between combinatorics, origami and engineering. |
Suppose you have an infinitely large sheet of paper (mathematicians refer to this hypothetical object as the plane). You also have a number of different colours - pots of paint, perhaps. Your aim is to colour every point on the plane using the colours available. That is, each point must be assigned one colour. |
