Solving Mazes
The best-known rule for traversing mazes is known as either the left-hand rule or the right-hand rule. By keeping one hand in contact with one wall of the maze, you are guaranteed not to get lost, and will either reach the exit or return to the entrance. If the maze is simply connected, i.e. all its walls are connected together, this method will cause you to traverse the whole of the maze. If not, it will not help you to find the disjoint parts of the maze.
The mathematician Leonhard Euler was one of the first to analyse mazes mathematically, and in doing so founded the science of topology.
Mazes open to the public
Maze by Christopher Manson
Maze (Henry Holt & Company, Inc.; (February 1989), ISBN 0805010882), billed as "The World's Hardest Puzzle", is a 45-room house in the form of a book. A party of naive adventurers is led through by an unnamed poet, whose identity is a subject of much speculation. Each page is a room, with hundreds of possible visual clues in the picture along with the numbers of the rooms that can be entered, and a page describing the actions of the narrator and the adventurers which may contain even more clues. The object is to reach the "center" (Page 45), answer the riddle found there, and get back out in the fewest possible steps (16).
Mazes in science experiments
Mazes are often used in science experiments to study spatial navigation and learning. Such experiments typically use rats or mice. Examples include the Barnes maze, the Morris water maze, and the radial arm maze.
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