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How Minor Defects Affect Packing Efficiency

Researchers at the University of Michigan have investigated how packing efficiency varies within shape families when edges and/or corners are sliced off.

Sharon Glotzer and colleagues started with cubes, dodecahedrons, and tetrahedrons, and then created variations on these: more than 55,000 shapes in total. They found that while small changes in shape gradually affected packing efficiency in the dodecahedron family, variants of cubes and tetrahedrons did not behave as predictably.

Read New Scientist's coverage.

Start Date: 
Thursday, March 27, 2014