Symmetry, shape, and order.

ABSTRACT: Packing problems have been of great interest in many diverse contexts for many centuries. The optimal packing of identical objects has been often invoked to understand the nature of low-temperature phases of matter. In celebrated work, Kepler conjectured that the densest packing of spheres is realized by stacking variants of the face-centered-cubic lattice and has a packing fraction of pi /(3\square root2)\approximately 0.7405. Much more recently, an unusually high-density packing of approximately 0.770732 was achieved for congruent ellipsoids. Such studies are relevant for understanding the structure of crystals, glasses, the storage and jamming of granular materials, ceramics, and the assembly of viral capsid structures. Here, we carry out analytical studies of the stacking of close-pack

SUBMITTER: Trovato A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2148265 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature