- More than 2 years ago
The familiar arrangement evident in piles of neatly stacked oranges at a supermarket represents the tightest possible packing of identical spheres (SN: 8/15/98, p. 103: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/8_15_98/fob7.htm). The ordered spheres occupy 74 percent of the total space available. The fraction of space typically filled by randomly packed spheres—whether peas poured into a bag or ball bearings into a tin—has proved much more difficult to pin down.