An interior designer has a dilemma. She has to move an amazingly heavy armchair which is up against a wall. The chair needs to be sitting so it is exactly beside its starting position and facing the same way.

If the only possible movement is to rotate the chair on any of its corners, how can the chair be moved to its new position?

Ok, we saw the perfect armchair solution, where the legs were on the exact corners of the piece. But what about a more realistic chair? Let's say the pivot point on the legs of the chair is actually a distance D from the left and right sides of the chair.

In that case, the solution would still be very similar to Charlie's, EXCEPT for the location of the imaginary line.

This will take only three rotations:

1. Draw an imaginary line perpendicular to the wall. This line should be a distance D away from the center of where the chair will be, closer to the chair's original position. (So the line will be exactly between leg A's position, before and after).

2. Rotate upon the leg (A) that's away from the wall and nearest this imaginary line until the other leg (B) that's away from the wall is on the imaginary line.

3. Rotate A about B until it's the same distance from the wall as it was before.

4. Rotate B about A until the back of the chair is against the wall.

(removed angles of rotations because they were wrong)

Edited on September 1, 2004, 8:04 am

Posted by nikki on 2004-08-31 14:53:55