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Four students solved a geometry puzzle by pretending squares were resistors

Ellsworth Toohey
Feb 11, 2026
∙ Paid

By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Four Cambridge math students in the 1930s wanted to know if you could fill a square with smaller squares, each a different size. They solved it by pretending the squares were electrical resistors. Brooks, Smith, Stone, and Tutte — who published as “Blanche Descartes,” a shared pen name — transformed the geometry p…

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