Once upon a time there were plenty of square pegs jammed into round holes, but those dark times have passed. Now there is a special shape that allows people to drill square holes. This special ...

Mathematicians are “reinventing the wheel” by giving it a new shape. Their newly imagined wheel looks like a many-dimensional guitar pick, and it could theoretically roll in ways beyond our ...

Mathematicians have long wondered how “shapes of constant width” behave in higher dimensions. A surprisingly simple construction has given them an answer. In 1986, after the space shuttle Challenger ...

In two dimensions, it’s the Reuleaux triangle: an equilateral triangle with curved arcs connecting each corner, creating a shape with a constant width but a smaller area than a circle. Now, a team of ...

[Angus Deveson] published a video on “solids of constant width” nearly a year ago. Following the release of the video, he had a deluge of requests asking if he could make a bearing from them. Since ...

Have you ever wondered why the cover of a manhole is nearly always round? Why isn’t it oval or square? Reuleaux curve based on an equilateral triangle. Reuleaux curves based on the pentagon (top) and ...