Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The same packing density can also be achieved by alternate stackings of the same close-packed planes of spheres, including structures that are aperiodic in the stacking direction. The Kepler conjecture states that this is the highest density that can be achieved by any arrangement of spheres, either regular or irregular.
Sphere packing finds practical application in the stacking of cannonballs. In geometry, a sphere packing is an arrangement of non-overlapping spheres within a containing space. The spheres considered are usually all of identical size, and the space is usually three-dimensional Euclidean space.
Random close packing (RCP) of spheres is an empirical parameter used to characterize the maximum volume fraction of solid objects obtained when they are packed randomly. For example, when a solid container is filled with grain, shaking the container will reduce the volume taken up by the objects, thus allowing more grain to be added to the container.
This yields the greatest possible packing density and the lowest energy state. — — Below is a candidate caption for use in Close-packing article, added 16:33, 26 February 2007 (and revised 20:15, 26 February 2007) — — Shown above is what the science of sphere packing calls a closest-packed arrangement.
An arrangement in which the midpoint of all the spheres lie on a single straight line is called a sausage packing, as the convex hull has a sausage-like shape.An approximate example in real life is the packing of tennis balls in a tube, though the ends must be rounded for the tube to coincide with the actual convex hull.
For a given sphere packing (arrangement of spheres) in a given space, a kissing number can also be defined for each individual sphere as the number of spheres it touches. For a lattice packing the kissing number is the same for every sphere, but for an arbitrary sphere packing the kissing number may vary from one sphere to another.
A packed bunch of spheres will have an average kissing number, which helps mathematically describe the situation. But a basic question about the kissing number stands unanswered.
Sphere packing in a sphere is a three-dimensional packing problem with the objective of packing a given number of equal spheres inside a unit sphere. It is the three-dimensional equivalent of the circle packing in a circle problem in two dimensions.