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Local Density


Let each sphere in a sphere packing expand uniformly until it touches its neighbors on flat faces. Call the resulting polyhedron the local cell. Then the local density is given by

 rho=(V_(sphere))/(V_(local cell)).

When the local cell is a regular dodecahedron, then

 rho_(dodecahedron)=(pisqrt(5+sqrt(5)))/(15sqrt(10)(sqrt(5)-2))=0.7547....

See also

Local Cell, Local Density Conjecture, Sphere Packing

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Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Local Density." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/LocalDensity.html

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