Moving sofa problem

Have you ever tried to move a big and heavy sofa from one room to another? It can be a really tricky problem! Sometimes the sofa is too big to fit through doorways or around corners, or it's too heavy for just one person to lift. This is what we call the "moving sofa problem".

Now, imagine we have a really fancy sofa that has a very particular shape. We want to move it from one room to another, but it has some tricky curves and angles that make it even more difficult to maneuver. The big question is: what is the largest opening we need to fit this sofa through?

To solve this problem, mathematicians came up with a formula that helps us figure out the maximum size of an opening that the sofa can fit through. They call it the "Sofa constant".

This formula takes into account the shape of the sofa and calculates the largest possible diagonal of a rectangular opening that the sofa can fit through. This means that if we can measure the diagonal of the door or hallway we're trying to move the sofa through, and it's smaller than the Sofa constant, we know we're in business! But if the diagonal is larger than the Sofa constant, we might need to find a different way to move the sofa, like taking it apart or hiring some extra help.

So, the moving sofa problem is a fun math puzzle that helps us figure out how to move big and heavy furniture in a smart and efficient way. It's like a giant game of Tetris, where we have to figure out the best way to fit all the pieces together without getting stuck.