The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner
A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers. The post The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner first appeared on Quanta Magazine
If you’ve ever moved into a new home, then you know how difficult it can be to steer bulky furniture through narrow hallways or around awkward corners. Mathematicians have been trying to solve this problem, too, ever since 1966, when Leo Moser framed it in quantitative terms. Say you want to move a two-dimensional shape — your sofa (disregarding its height) — through an L-shaped hallway.
