Fig. 2: An example for physically solving computational problems.
From: A balance for fairness: fair distribution utilising physics

There are three villages with 50, 70 and 90 elementary school students living in each village. How can we minimise the total distance travelled for all students' to school when we build an elementary school? The answer is the centre of gravity (as to where the elementary school should be built). This figure was reprinted with the permission of the copyright holder, the Oxford University Press. H. Steinhaus: Mathematical Snapshots, Oxford Univ. Press (1960).