Given an $n$-vertex graph and two straight-line planar drawings of the graph that have the same faces and the same outer face, we show that there is a morph (i.e., a continuous transformation) between the two drawings that preserves straight-line planarity and consists of $O(n)$ steps, which we prove is optimal in the worst case. Each step is a unidirectional linear morph, which means that every vertex moves at constant speed along a straight line, and the lines are parallel although the vertex speeds may differ. Thus we provide an efficient version of Cairns' 1944 proof of the existence of straight-line planarity-preserving morphs for triangulated graphs, which required an exponential number of steps.

We present a strategic model of network creation that satisfies all known theoretically verifiable properties of the small-world phenomenon. We consider a population that is uniformly distributed in a low-dimensional space, and show that in such a society if each individual follows the status of a subset of others by investing attention in order to satisfy curiosity, then small-world properties appear naturally as a side effect.

In 1944, Cairns proved the following theorem: given any two straight-line planar drawings of a triangulation with the same outer face, there exists a morph (i.e., a continuous transformation) between the two drawings so that the drawing remains straight-line planar at all times. Cairns's original proof required exponentially many morphing steps. We prove that there is a morph that consists of O(n2) steps, where each step is a linear morph that moves each vertex at constant speed along a straight line. Using a known result on compatible triangulations this implies that for a general planar graph G and any two straight-line planar drawings of G with the same embedding, there is a morph between the two drawings that preserves straight-line planarity and consists of O(n4) steps.