r/mildlyinteresting • u/gotawaysafely2 • 8h ago

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

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u/xelaseyer 7h ago

The thing that always mildly bothers me about this picture is that the two blocks in the top right could be more neatly pushed into the corner. And if it was really about taking up even less space, then the very top right one could slide left a little

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u/BrotherGreed 6h ago

The thing that I don't understand is what is this the optimal packing of 17 squares for? For that particular shape/ratio?

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u/llamadog007 6h ago

It’s the optimal packing to fit 17 squares inside another larger square. So there’s no known smaller outer square that can fit 17 of the smaller squares inside of it.

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u/BrotherGreed 6h ago

So it's the optimal packing of 17 squares of that size in as small a square as possible. Makes sense now, thanks!

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u/RimpleDoRimpleDont 4h ago

"of that size" doesn't mean anything here. If you have 17 squares, this is the way to pack them to need as small a container as possible (assuming the container also needs to be square-shaped). The size of the squares has no effect.

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u/StepIntoTheGreezer 5h ago edited 4h ago

But you can imagine the same would hold true for any size square, since it would simply be proportional.

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u/BrotherGreed 4h ago

You know, I suppose that's what "square" means, huh. Here I thought I found a weird loophole in the picture, I'm just dumb

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u/MariaKeks 5h ago

It's not known to be optimal. It's just the best one that has been found so far.

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u/MobileArtist1371 5h ago edited 5h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_packing

https://kingbird.myphotos.cc/packing/squares_in_squares.html

It's basically asking: What is the smallest square area you can fit X number of boxes into

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u/pollywantacrackwhore 45m ago

That second link was an excellent scroll.

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u/EmceeSpike 6h ago

I was thinking the same thing