Packing, tiling, and covering with tetrahedra.
It is well known that three-dimensional Euclidean space cannot be tiled by regular tetrahedra. But how well can we do? In this work, we give several constructions that may answer the various senses of this question. In so doing, we provide some solutions to packing, tiling, and covering problems of tetrahedra. Our results suggest that the regular tetrahedron may not be able to pack as densely as the sphere, which would contradict a conjecture of Ulam. The regular tetrahedron might even be the convex body having the smallest possible packing density.
Conway
J H
JH
Department of Mathematics, Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM), and Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics, Princeton University, NJ 08544, USA.
Torquato
S
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