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"Rounding Out Solutions to Three Conjectures", by Barry Cipra, Dana Mackenzie, and Charles Seife. Science, 17 March 2000, pages 1910-1912.
This article consists of three pieces by different authors reporting on the solution of three mathematical problems. The first piece is about the "double-bubble conjecture", which confirmed that the familiar double-bubble shape one finds when blowing soap bubbles is the most efficient possible way to enclose two volumes. The second describes a result in celestial mechanics, which shows that a configuration of three stars could settle into stable orbits in which they all travel in a figure-eight pattern. The third piece discusses the question of how efficiently one can pack spheres into a box if the spheres are not arranged, but simply dumped into the box so that they assume a random configuration. Researchers found that, as the spheres are packed more densely, and hence more efficiently, more and more order is introduced into the configuration.
--- Allyn Jackson
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