Towards the Ultimate Laptop Balancing Theorem
If you’ve ever run out of table space for a laptop, there’s an academic paper just for you. Seven pages of math as a starting point for the ULBT – Ultimate Laptop Balancing Theorem.
“Minimizing the footprint of your laptop” starts out with what might seem obvious, that the stable position using the least table space has to include the mid-point of the laptop.
Then follows seven pages of geometrical rigor ending with a challenge for the reader:
Prove the Ultimate Laptop Balancing Theorem,
“ that includes everything that your lazy author did and did not cover in this note:
- arbitrary location of the center of gravity
- starshaped laptops
- jellyfish-shaped tables
- higher-dimensional tables and laptops, etc. “
Surely one of the most practical papers ever to come out of Monash University😊
Thanks to Burkard Polster from the School of Mathematical Sciences for “Minimizing the footprint of your laptop”