By Samantha Murphy2013-05-03 15:59:57 UTCOK math nerds, hold on to your protractors. Google Maps has just added Street View imagery of Russia's Seven Bridges of Köenigsberg — the landmark behind the classic mathematical problem that has had people scratching their heads for centuries.
As a part of an effort to roll out more map coverage of Russia, the Street View team landed in the seaport town of Kaliningrad (the the modern name for Köeningsberg). The town is home to seven bridges made famous in the 1700s by mathematician Leonhard Euler, who was recently featured in a Google Doodle.
Euler believed there was no possible way to go over each of the seven bridges once... and only once. Google sums up the challenge in a blog post: "find a route through Kaliningrad—which was once separated by the Pregel River—by crossing each of the seven bridges in town. The catch? One could only cross each bridge exactly once."
"This famous problem and Leonhard Euler’s nonresolution paved the way for important discoveries in the field of mathematics including graph theory and topology," Google adds.
In fact, some of his findings are even used to calculate optimal driving routes for Google's Street View cars.
"We use sophisticated algorithms, based on graph theory, to determine the best route through a city or town helping us capture all the images we need to make Google Maps comprehensive, in the shortest amount of time," Google said. "Though these algorithms are complex, in simple terms, it's equivalent to solving the problem of drawing a house without lifting your pen and never going over the same segment twice."
Although only five of the original bridges still remain — two were destroyed in World War II — Google Maps takes you over them and through town.
If you look close enough, you can see the engraved padlocks hanging on the sides of the bridges, which is considered tradition for newly married couples to add one to the collection.
Images via Google Maps and The MAA Mathematical Sciences Digital Library
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