Also known as brachistochrone, curve of fastest descent, brachistochrone problem
curve connecting two points such that a bead sliding frictionlessly in a uniform gravitational field moves to the other endpoint the fastest
The curve of fastest descent is not a straight or polygonal line (blue) but a cycloid (red).
In physics and mathematics, a brachistochrone curve (from Ancient Greek βράχιστος χρόνος (brákhistos khrónos) 'shortest time'), or curve of fastest descent, is the one lying on the plane between a point A and a lower point B, where B is not directly below A, on which a bead from rest slides frictionlessly under the influence of a uniform gravitational field to a given end point in the shortest time. The problem was posed by Johann Bernoulli in 1696 and famously solved in one night by Isaac Newton in 1697, though Bernoulli and several others had already found solutions of their own months earlier.
via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).