Post by @TomSwirly@toot.community

2023-12-12 09:35 UTC

@mbonsma@mastodon.social I saw the initial claim, disagreed, came here, this is the key point. You have some nice, orderly definition of jigsaw pieces which you haven't explicated in this thread which does not allow for topologically complicated pieces. For example, what if many piece have thin "tendrils" which are as long and as wide as the whole puzzle? (I won't even go into what might be possible with jigsaw pieces that aren't measurable sets, see the Banach-Tarski paradox!)

Replies (4)

@ahltorp@mastodon.nu 2023-12-12 10:28

@TomSwirly@toot.community @mbonsma@mastodon.social I was at first confused why this was categorised as “physics”, but when I saw the simplifications, it all made sense.

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@stillmoms@mastodon.social 2023-12-12 11:31

@TomSwirly@toot.community @mbonsma@mastodon.social I must’ve skipped over the “topologically complicated” section of puzzles in my local bookstore.

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@mbonsma@mastodon.social 2023-12-12 13:10

@TomSwirly@toot.community two things: first, we did not specifically select for "normal" puzzles and the theory still works, aka most puzzles have pieces that are kind of vaguely square even with nubs and holes. One of the puzzles was a very large linear children's floor puzzle. Second, I'm not convinced it *would* break down even if the pieces had a wider distribution of shapes, because they might still pack according to circles with the average area, on average. More data needed!

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@aardarf@kind.social 2023-12-14 13:17

@TomSwirly@toot.community @mbonsma@mastodon.social There WAS specification of "spherical cow in a vacuum" which I thought would eliminate topologically complicated pieces.

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