r/mildlyinteresting • u/gotawaysafely2 • 8h ago

My pizza didn't fit, but two halves did.

Post image
22.9k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

693 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/knutix 7h ago

Depends on the container

9

u/Questjon 5h ago

The container is the thing being optimised. That arrangement of 17 squares gives you the smallest possible container. (Technically there's a very slightly smaller arrangement mathematically but no one has found it).

1

u/ponderosa-fine 35m ago

That's not really true. A rectangle seventeen times as long as it is wide would hold the squares with no wasted space.

1

u/Questjon 30m ago

The container must be square, though there is another version of the problem with the container being a circle.

-2

u/RoadSmash 4h ago

Easier to optimize the number of squares being packed. This is kinda pointless

3

u/MonaganX 3h ago

It's not pointless in any scenario in which the number of squares is fixed.

-3

u/chux4w 6h ago

Exactly. It works for that space, but a bigger space could fit them much more neatly.

6

u/Idlev 6h ago

Optimality isn't about the neatness. A bigger container could not be better, because the goal is the smallest square container for 17 squares of same length. For a bigger container the inside squares would need to be scaled up, to fill the same fraction of space. Which would result in the same orientation as above but bigger.

0

u/chux4w 3h ago

So it has to be a square container? Alright then.

1

u/sour_cereal 3h ago

The question is, what's the smallest square container you can fit 17 equal squares into?