MATHEMATICAL
revealing his favorite heart-spotted un­
RECREATIONS
A menu of mathematical morsels,
topological tidbits and puzzling plums
by A. K. Dewdney
R
oss Honsberger has spent more
than two decades collecting
mathematical morsels for gener­
al consumption. Attending one of his
rare public lectures recently, I had the
pleasure of sampling one of his mathe­
matical feasts. I found it not just palat­
able but downright delicious.
Honsberger, who teaches mathemat­
ics at the University of Waterloo in Ca­
nada, will stop at nothing to demon-
What is the color of the last of 75 white beans and 150 black ones in the urn?
116 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN March 1991
strate mathematical principles. To il­
lustrate a topological tidbit one day,
he wandered into a colleague's lecture
wearing his trousers inside out. He an­
nounced that he would turn them right
side out without really taking them off.
To show that the trousers would
not "really" be removed, he tied his
own ankles together with an eight-foot
length of rope. He proceeded to pull
both trouser legs down onto the rope,
• ---7
TO PILE
BACK IN 0 .---7
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DISCARD
© 1991 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC
dershorts. The students watched close­
ly for any deception as he first twist­
ed the pants through the rope, then
turned them right side out and final­
ly wriggled back into them. I can testi­
fy that Honsberger 's trick requires nei­
ther magic nor mirrors.
I listened to Honsberger 's lecture
near my hometown in Ontario. He
served to the audience such delights
as spheres in a cone, checkers on a
board, dots on a dish and beans in a
Greek urn.
Honsberger began by describing the
marvelous spheres of Germinal Dan­
delin, a 19th-century Belgian mathema­
tician. Dandelin discovered an amaz­
ing connection between the classical
and modern concepts of the ellipse.
The Greeks conceived of an ellipse as
the figure that results when a plane
cuts obliquely through a cone. Since
the time of Descartes, however, the
ellipse has been described analytical­
ly in terms of two special points called
foci. The sum of the distances from the
two foci to any point on the ellipse
is constant.
Honsberger introduced Dandelin's
spheres by drawing our attention to a
projected transparency of a plane cut­
ting a cone. (Readers can follow Dan­
delin's argument with occasional glanc­
es at the top illustration on the op­
posite page.) I cannot swear that what
follows are Honsberger 's exact words,
but he readily admits to a certain,
broad similarity:
"It takes no genius to see that the
plane divides the cone into two pieces.
But it was Dandelin's idea to insert a
sphere into each piece. Like an over­
inflated balloon, each sphere contacts
the wall of the cone and touches the
elliptical plane at a certain point. But
where? One can imagine Dandelin's
h,eart leaping at the thought that the
two spheres might touch the plane at
the two focal points of the ellipse."
Honsberger places his marking pen
on the transparency. He labels the two
points of contact by the symbols F and
G. Are these the foci of the ellipse?
"Let's take a look at what clever old
Dandelin did. First, through any point
P that we care to select on the ellipse,
we may draw a straight line that runs
up the side of the cone to its tip. Sec­
ond, the line will touch the two spheres
at two points, say, A and B. No matter
where we pick P to lie on the ellipse,
the length of AB will be the same.
"Ah, but that gives it away! The dis­
tance from the point F to P equals the
distance from F to A. After all, both
PF and PA are tangents to the same
sphere from the same point. By the
same reasoning, the distance from the
second point, G, to P equals the dis­
tance from G to B. Are we not finished?
PF + PG = PA + PB, and the latter sum An ellipse in a cone separates Dandelin's spheres
is just the (constant) length of AB.
"Now isn't that the darndest thing?"
quips Honsberger. the rules: solvers can arrange a giv­ He places two checkers adjacent to
As I look around the lecture hall, stu­ en number of checkers any way they each other on the board, jumps the
dents appear stunned. Professors alter­ like behind the line. Checkers can be back checker over the front one, then
nately smile and frown. One of them jumped and removed in the vertical strides triumphantly to the blackboard,
behind me murmurs, "Well, I'll be." or horizontal direction, but the final where he writes
Without pausing for a breath, Hons­ jump can leave only one checker. The
berger serves up the next morsel. We problem is to decide how many check­ d number of checkers
find ourselves staring at a slide of a pe­ ers it will take, at a minimum, to "pro­
culiar board game. pel" the last checker a given distance d 1 2
"Here's a simple little exercise in beyond the line. In deciding this, solv­
checker-jumping. I imagine that such ers must also devise an arrangement Next he places four checkers on the
a clever audience will have no trouble that allows the frenzy of jumping to board. He jumps the checkers until a
figuring this one out." A devilish gleam take place. single checker is left in the second row.
invades his eye, a warning that some­ "Does anybody want to take a crack "I'm just saving you people the trou­
thing unusual is about to happen. at this problem?" Honsberger looks up ble of figuring it out. Believe me, this is
The slide shows a grid of squares at the audience, sees there are no tak­ the best that anyone can do." He writes
with a line drawn through it [see il­ ers and smiles ingenuously. "2" under "d" and "4" under "number
lustration belowl. Honsberger explains "Well, then, let's try a few examples." of checkers." He creates another con-

Four checker-jumping arrangements

© 1991 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN March 1991 1 17
 of us are confused. We thought the
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idea was to cover 10 points by one
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are turned inside out like a pair of
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"Look at the point If you take
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away the 10 washers that cover it and
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tered at x, then that washer alone must
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cover the centers of the 10 washers

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that we took away. Each of these cen­
ters is one of the 650 original points!"

O
WASHER
SMALLER
CIRCLE
\
The washer problem
figuration of eight checkers and man­ the inside radius is two. You are then
ages to propel one checker to the third challenged to place the washer so that
row. He scribbles "3" and "8" on the it covers at least 10 of the 650 points."
blackboard. "Impossible," whispers an impetuous
"Anybody want to guess how many undergraduate behind me. "What if all
checkers it takes to send one checker the points are in a tiny area?"
four units beyond the line?" "Then he can cover all of them with
Somebody volunteers the figure 16. one washer, you idiotf" retorts anoth­
No. The answer turns out to be 20 er student.
checkers, at a minimum. Is it really possible to cover 10 points
The audience is now getting some­ with the washer? Honsberger begins
what worked up. Could the relation the proof by drawing a diagram [see il­
between distance and the number of lustration above]. He invites us to imag­
checkers be described by one of those ine that a copy of the washer has been
superexponential functions? Perhaps centered at each of the 650 points in­
it will take a million checkers to send side the circle.
one checker five units beyond the line. Some of the points may be near the
When Honsberger reveals the answer, edge of the circle, in which case some
members of the audience look at one of the annuli will extend beyond its
another, smiling uncomfortably. circumference. But because each point
"Alas! A million checkers will not be lies inside the circle and because the
enough, nor a billion. It is simply im­ washer has radius three, all the annu­
possible, no matter how many check­ li will lie within the larger circle hav­
ers you assemble behind the line or ing the same center and having radius
how you arrange them. It was John 19, that is, the sum of 16 and three.
Conway, the Cambridge mathematician, The area of the washer is the differ­
who proved the task impossible." ence between the area of a circle of ra­
Honsberger does stop the lecture to dius three and one of radius two. This
describe Conway's difficult proof, al­ comes to five times rr.
though he would not dream of discour­ "The 650 washers blanket the large
aging anyone from attempting it. In­ circle with a total coverage of 650
stead he quickly moves on to a discus­ times 5rr, that is 3,250rr. Of course,
sion of the pigeonhole principle. much of the coverage will be over­
This famed principle simply states lapping, but suppose for the moment
that if I build 9,999 pigeonholes for 10,- that no point of the inner circle is
000 pigeons, at least one of the holes buried under more than nine wash­
would house more than one bird. The ers. In such a case, the total amount of
pigeonhole principle has been used to area covered within the larger circle
prove many theorems in combinator­ could not come to more than 3,249rr,
ics, the branch of mathematics that nine times the area of the circle. But
deals with finite collections. because 3,249rr is less than 3,250rr,
"The next mathematical morsel is some point, x, must be covered by at
one of the strangest applications of the least 10 washers. The pigeonhole prin­
pigeonhole principle ever made. Imag­ ciple strikes again."
ine that someone has placed 650 points Honsberger pauses to catch his
inside a circle of radius 16 units. You breath. "You see it now, don't you?"
The morsel is digested as we hear a
faint gulp from somewhere at the back
of the lecture room.
The piece de resistance of Honsberg­
er 's menu arrives in the form of a
Grecian urn adorning his next trans­
parency [see illustration on page 116].
"How much can a Grecian earn?" quips
Honsberger.
When the groans have died away,
he explains the problem. An urn is
filled with 75 white beans and 150
black ones. Next to the urn is a large
pile of black beans. The beans are re­
moved from the urn according to cer­
tain rules.
"Here's how it works. Remove two
beans from the urn at random. If at
least one of the two beans is black,
place it on the pile and drop the other
bean, whether white or black, back into
the urn. But if both of the removed
beans are white, discard both of them
and take one black bean from the pile
and drop it into the urn."
"Each time a Greek or anyone else
dips into the urn to remove two beans
at random, either operation ensures
that there will be one fewer bean in the
urn than there was before the move.
Slowly and steadily, the original supply
of black and white beans dwindles. At
last there are three beans left in the
urn, then two, then one. What color is
the last bean?"
The simple and startling answer is
white. By figuring out why, a Greek can
earn intangible delights worth much
more than a hill of beans.
FURTHER READING
MATIIEMATICAL GEMS: FROM ELEMEN­
TARY COMBINATORICS, NUMBER THEORY
AND GEOMETRY. Ross Honsberger. Dol­
ciani Mathematical Expositions, No. l.
Mathematical Association of America,
1973.
MATIIEMATICAL MORSELS. Ross Hons­
berger. Dolciani Mathematical Exposi­
tions, No.3. Mathematical Association
of America , 1978.
MATIIEMATICAL PLUMS. Edited by Ross

have been given an annulus, a flat ring Then he feigns surprise. "You don't?" Honsberger. Dolciani Mathematical Ex­
positions, NO.4. Mathematical Associa­
in the shape of a washer. The outside The application of the pigeonhole
tion of America , 1979.
radius of the washer is three units, and principle is clear enough, but some

118 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN March 1991

© 1991 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC
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