Strawberry. Blueberry. Lemon. Lime. Orange. How many gumballs will fit in a gumball machine? Well, what you have here is your classic sphere-packing problem in a three-dimensional Euclidean space. But, whether your technique is cubic lattice, hexagonal close-packed, or face-centered cubic, the "how many" really depends on the size of the gumball and of the space, of course. A 10 x 10" cube could hold a few thousand half inchers, while only an 850 count of these one-inchers. Whatever, just pour the damn balls into the machine, will ya?

12.10.20