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34 votes
6 answers
8k views

Covering a unit ball with balls half the radius

This is a direct (and obvious) generalization of the recent MO question, "Covering disks with smaller disks": How many balls of radius $\frac{1}{2}$ are needed to cover completely a ball of ...
23 votes
1 answer
714 views

Covering the unit sphere in $\mathbf{R}^n$ with $2n$ congruent disks

Let $v_i$ be $2n$ points in $\mathbf{R}^n$, with equal distance $|v_i|$ from the origin. Suppose that the convex hull of these points contains the unit ball. Is it known that $|v_i|\geq\sqrt{n}$? ...
1 vote
0 answers
278 views

Sphere packings with antipodal (unequal) spheres

Let $\|\cdot\|_2$ denote the Euclidean norm, let $\langle \cdot, \cdot\rangle$ denote the standard dot product, and let $\mathcal{S}^{d-1} = \{\mathbf{x} \in \mathbb{R}^d: \|\mathbf{x}\|_2 = 1\}$ ...
16 votes
6 answers
2k views

Optimal pebble-packing shape

Suppose you throw many ($n$) congruent convex bodies (in $\mathbb{R}^3$) of unit volume (or of unit area in $\mathbb{R}^2$) into a large container, and shake it until little else changes. Q. ...
13 votes
2 answers
1k views

Average degree of contact graph for balls in a box

Imagine you dump congruent, hard, frictionless balls in a box, letting gravity compress the balls into a stable configuration (I believe such configurations are called jammed.) Assume the box ...
52 votes
5 answers
2k views

Tetris-like falling sticky disks

Suppose unit-radius disks fall vertically from $y=+\infty$, one by one, and create a random jumble of disks above the $x$-axis. When a falling disk hits another, it stops and sticks there. Otherwise, ...
1 vote
0 answers
70 views

Covering number of the range of a function

I have come across the need to know a bound on a certain curious quantity: the covering number of the range of a continuous function $f: D \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n$, where $D \subseteq \mathbb{R}^m$. ...
5 votes
0 answers
1k views

N-balls covering n-balls

This question is a follow-on question from: Covering a unit ball with balls half the radius The questions are these: Given an arbitrary dimension d, and a unit n-ball in d-dimensional Euclidean ...