Heating a Torus with Number Theory
Florian Pausinger, Stefan Steinerberger · Mathematics Magazine · 2019
SummaryWe discuss an amusing application of number theory: suppose you find yourself on the two-dimensional torus T2 equipped with N candles and want to position the candles in such a way that they heat up the room as efficiently as possible. To achieve this goal, we give a construction that uses number theory as the main ingredient and explain related results.