挂谷问题的简单情形.docVIP

The Kakeya Needle Problem Debra R. Lorentz Senior Seminar Paper April 27, 2007 Division of Science and Mathematics University of Minnesota, Morris lore0172@ Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mark Logan Division of Science and Mathematics University of Minnesota, Morris loganm@ 1. Introduction The Kakeya needle problem was proposed in 1917, by the Japanese mathematician S. Kakeya. The problem states, In the class of figures in which a segment of length 1 can be turned around through 360?, remaining always within the figure, which one has the smallest area? Due to the isolation of Russia caused by the civil war, this problem did not reach the Russian mathematician Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch. Yet in 1920 he was able to solve a similar problem, and once Besicovitch was made aware of the Kakeya needle problem in 1928, he published his solution to the Kakeya Problem in Mathematische Zeitschrift. [2] Class of Figures The four figures that follow [2] are all in the class described above. In each of the figures, the shaded region represents the area needed to rotate the given unit segment through 360?. Figure 1 is a circle of diameter 1. This is clearly in the class of figures, because if you let the midpoint of the segment be in the center of the circle, it is possible to rotate the segment about the center, in either direction, through 360?, with the segment remaining always within the circle. The area of a circle is given by, so in this case, Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 2 is a pentagram with diagonal of length 1. A pentagram is constructed by connecting the vertices of a regular pentagon. The area of this figure can be found by splitting up the pentagram into four triangles, and finding the areas of each respective triangle and then adding up the four areas to get the total area of the figure. This result can be verified with the use of Geometr