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Cork Plug


A cork plug is a three-dimensional solid that can stopper a square, triangular, or circular hole. There is an infinite family of such shapes.

The shape with smallest volume has triangular cross sections.

CorkPlugProjections
CorkPlug

The plug with the largest volume is made using two cuts from the top diameter to the edge, as illustrated above. Such a plug has h=2r to obtain a square cross section. For a general such a plug of height h and radius r, the volume of the plug is

 V=1/3(3pi-4)hr^2.

See also

Cross Section, Stereology, Trip-Let

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References

Gardner, M. "The Cork Plug." Ch. 5 in The Second Scientific American Book of Puzzles & Diversions: A New Selection. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 52-59, 1961.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Cork Plug." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CorkPlug.html

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