Weaire / Aste The Pursuit of Perfect Packing, Second Edition

2. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4200-6818-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

Coauthored by one of the creators of the most efficient space packing solution, the Weaire–Phelan structure, The Pursuit of Perfect Packing, Second Edition explores a problem of importance in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and engineering: the packing of structures. Maintaining its mathematical core, this edition continues and revises some of the stories from its predecessor while adding several new examples and applications. The book focuses on both scientific and everyday problems ranging from atoms to honeycombs. It describes packing models, such as the Kepler conjecture, Voronoï decomposition, and Delaunay decomposition, as well as actual structure models, such as the Kelvin cell and the Weaire–Phelan structure. The authors discuss numerous historical aspects and provide biographical details on influential contributors to the field, including emails from Thomas Hales and Ken Brakke. With examples from physics, crystallography, engineering, and biology, this accessible and whimsical book touches on many aspects of packing objects. It will help you understand components of packing and aid you in the quest for the perfect packing solution.

Zielgruppe

Mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and general science readers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weaire, Denis

Aste, Tomaso

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Physik Physik Allgemein Theoretische Physik, Mathematische Physik, Computerphysik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prefaces
How Many Sweets in the Jar?
Loose Change and Tight Packing
A Teasing but Tractable Problem
A Handful of Coins
Order and Disorder
Hard Problems with Hard Spheres
The Greengrocer’s Dilemma
Ordered Close Packing—The Kepler Problem
The Kepler Conjecture
Marvelous Clarity, Neurotic Anxiety: The Life of Kepler
Progress by Leaps and Bounds?
Proof Positive?
News from the Western Front
The Programme of Thomas Hales
At Last?
Polishing Off the Programme
The Acceptance of Proof
The Flyspeck Project
Who Cares?
The Power of Thought
Disordered Packings
Balls in Bags
A New Way of Looking
How Many Balls in the Bag?
Is the Bernal Close Packing Well Defined?
Bernal’s Long-Running Ball Game
Tomography Takes Over
Sands and Grains
Granular Materials
Osborne Reynolds: A Footprint in the Sand
Major Bagnold’s Desert Drive
Dunes
Order from Shaking
Segregation
Granular Temperature
Divide and Conquer: Tiling Space
Packing and Tiling
The Voronoï Construction
The Dual Construction of Delaunay
Applications
Vertices in Tilings
Three Dimensions
Regular and Semiregular Packings
Peas and Pips
Vegetable Staticks
Stephen Hales
Pomegranate Pips
Biological Cells, Lead Shot, Rubber Balls, and Soap Bubbles: Plus ça Change
Enthusiastic Admiration: The Honeycomb
The Honeycomb Problem
What the Bees Do Not Know
A Search for Structure
A Voice in the Wilderness
The Two-Dimensional Soap Froth
The Rules of the Game
In a Cambridge Garden
Toils and Troubles with Bubbles
Playing with Bubbles
A Blind Man in the Kingdom of the Sighted
Proving Plateau
Foam and Ether
The Kelvin Cell
Most Beautiful and Regular
The Twinkling of an Eye
Simulated Soap
A Discovery in Dublin
Crystals of Small Bubbles
Bubbles in Beijing
An Olympian Vision
Fun and Fit for Purpose?
A Flexible Friend?
The Architecture of the World of Atoms
Molecular Tactics
Atoms and Molecules: Begging the Question
Atoms as Points
Playing Hardball
Modern Crystallography
Crystalline Packings
Packing Tetrahedra
Changed Utterly: Quasicrystals
Amorphous Solids
Crystal Nonsense
Apollonius and Concrete
Mixing Concrete
Apollonian Packing
Packing Fraction and Fractal Dimension
Packing Fraction in Granular Aggregates
Packings and Kisses in High Dimensions
Packing in Many Dimensions
A Kissing Competition
Kissing the Neighbors in Higher Dimensions
Will Disorder Win in the End?
The Sweets in the Jar, the Pebbles on the Beach
Those Sweets
Hey, What Shape Do You Want Your Ice Cubes?
Another Walk on the Beach
The Giant’s Causeway
Worth Seeing?
Idealization Oversteps Again
The First Official Report
Mallett’s Model
A Modern View
The Last Word?
Lost City?
Finite Packings and Tessellations, from Soccer to Sausages
The Challenge of a Finite Suitcase
Soccer Balls
Golf Balls
Buckyballs
Buckminster Fuller
Graphenes
The Thomson Problem
Packing Points on a Disk
The Tammes Problem
Universal Optimal Configurations
Helical Packings
Virus Architecture
Stuffing Sausages
Filling Boxes
The Malfatti Problem
Odds and Ends
Ordered Loose Packings
Parking Cars
Goldberg Variations
Packing Regular Pentagons
Dodecahedral Packing and Curved Spaces
Microspheres and Opals
Protein Folding
The Tetra Pak Story
Packing Regular Tetrahedra
Nature and Geometry
Appendix A: The Best Packing in Two Dimensions
Appendix B: Turning Down the Heat: Simulated Annealing
Index