welcome
Quanta Magazine

Quanta Magazine

Science

Science

The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner | Quanta Magazine

Quanta Magazine
Summary
Nutrition label

79% Informative

Mathematicians have been trying to solve the moving sofa problem since 1966 .

Joseph Gerver of Rutgers University proposed a clever curved shape with an area of approximately 2.2195 .

In 2016 , a mathematician at the University of California provided a more conceptual description of Gerver ’s sofa.

The result illustrates that even the most straightforward optimization problems can have counterintuitively complicated answers.

Jin Baek was determined to work on the moving sofa problem.

Baek developed more powerful computational tools to drive the upper bound down even further.

He showed that the optimal shape had to at least resemble Gerver ’s sofa.

The proof offers a fresh approach to optimization problems, which is still being peer reviewed.

“I’m 75 years old now,” he said. “I feel lucky to have lived long enough to see someone finally solve the problem.”.

VR Score

84

Informative language

85

Neutral language

61

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

41

Offensive language

not offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

not detected

Time-value

long-living

Source diversity

2

Affiliate links

no affiliate links

Small business owner?

Otherweb launches Autoblogger—a revolutionary way to bring more leads to any small business, using the power of AI.