This paper establishes a connection between a problem in Potential Theory and Mathematical Physics, arranging points so as to minimize an energy functional, and a problem in Combinatorics and Number Theory, constructing ’well-distributed’ sequences of points on [0, 1). Let f:[0,1] rightarrow {mathbb {R}} be (1) symmetric f(x) = f(1-x), (2) twice differentiable on (0, 1), and (3) such that f''(x)>0 for all x in (0,1). We study the greedy dynamical system, where, given an initial set {x_0, ldots , x_{N-1}} subset [0,1), the point x_N is obtained as xN=argminx∈[0,1)∑k=0N-1f(|x-xk|).\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsmath}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{wasysym}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsfonts}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amssymb}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsbsy}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{mathrsfs}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{upgreek}\t\t\t\t\\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\t\t\t\t\\begin{document}$$\\begin{aligned} x_{N} = \\arg \\min _{x \\in [0,1)} \\sum _{k=0}^{N-1}{f(|x-x_k|)}. \\end{aligned}$$\\end{document}We prove that if we start this construction with the single element x_0=0, then all arising constructions are permutations of the van der Corput sequence (counting in binary and reflected about the comma): greedy energy minimization recovers the way we count in binary. This gives a new construction of the classical van der Corput sequence. The special case f(x) = 1-log (2 sin (pi x)) answers a question of Steinerberger. Interestingly, the point sets we derive are also known in a different context as Leja sequences on the unit disk.