The beautiful "Four Bugs Problem"
This cover from the July 1965 issue of Scientific American illustrates the "Four Bugs Problem" featured in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column about op art.
Scientific American, July 1965
This cover from the July 1965 issue of Scientific American illustrates the "Four Bugs Problem" featured in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column about op art.
The setup: Four bugs are placed at the corners of a square. They start crawling clockwise (or counterclockwise) at a constant rate, with each bug moving directl…