The mystery of the sealed box (Q483558): Difference between revisions

The authors study the behaviour of a ray emanating in a \(45^\circ\) angle from a corner of a given box with side lengths \(a,b,c\). A box is called \textit{triangular} if none of \(a,b,c\) is greater than the sum of the other two. Some of the results are: (1) For any triangular box with \(a,b,c\in\mathbb{N}\) and either \(a>b,c\) or \(b>a,c\) the ray will return to the start point. (2) If \(a\), \(b\), \(c\) are linearly independent over \(\mathbb{Q}\) and \(a,b<c<a+b\), then the path never reaches a corner.