Find a rectangular box whose three edges, three face diagonals and space diagonal all have integer lengths, or prove that none exists. In other words, find positive integers such that , , and are all perfect squares.
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Post a problemHow do baby water striders generate enough thrust to skate across water when their legs move too slowly to create the surface waves that classical theory said were needed?
Given integers, decide whether some three of them sum to zero. A simple algorithm takes time. Is there an algorithm that runs in time for some fixed ?
Why does a shower curtain billow inward and cling to a bather when the shower is running?
Prove that for every integer there are positive integers with
Why does coffee in a mug slosh out and spill specifically when carried while walking, often after a fairly predictable number of steps?
For a sequence of accesses to keys in a binary search tree with keys, let be the minimum total cost of serving by any binary search tree algorithm that may rotate the tree, even one that knows in advance. Prove or disprove that splay trees serve every access…
Why does an air bubble rising through water often not go straight up but instead zigzag or spiral once it grows past a certain size?
A positive integer is perfect if it equals the sum of its proper divisors, like and . Every known perfect number is even. Is there an odd perfect number?
What determines whether a flat stone thrown at a water surface will skip, and what throwing angle gives the most bounces?
A sorting network on wires is a fixed sequence of comparators, each of which swaps the values on two wires if they are out of order, such that every possible input comes out sorted. What is the minimum number of comparators in a sorting network for inputs?
Why do clear droplets or 'legs' of liquid form and slide down the inside of a wine glass above the surface of the wine?
Let be the smallest number such that any points in the plane, no three on a line, include points that are the vertices of a convex polygon. Prove or disprove that for every .
Does the direction a draining bathtub or sink swirls depend on hemisphere (Coriolis force), as commonly claimed?
Given a real matrix and a vector , decide whether there is with . Is there an algorithm whose number of arithmetic operations is bounded by a polynomial in and alone, independent of the size of the numbers in and ?
Why does a falling flat card or leaf sometimes flutter side to side, sometimes tumble end over end, and sometimes fall steadily, depending on its shape?
Euler's totient counts the integers in that are coprime to . When is prime, , which certainly divides . Is there a composite number for which divides ?
Why does a flag (or any flexible sheet) in a steady wind start to flap periodically instead of staying still or moving smoothly?
Prove that every set of more than vertices of the -dimensional hypercube induces a subgraph with a vertex of degree at least . Gotsman and Linial showed that this implies the sensitivity conjecture, that the degree and block sensitivity of a Boolean function are bounded by a…
Why do larger particles rise to the top of a shaken container of mixed granular material even when they are the same density or denser than the small particles?