Interestingly, this is a well known structure for spherical objects. It's one of these two structures, but it's hard to tell which from the picture... Anyway, this is what an atomic arrangement often found in metals. These two structures are partially defined by their "packing factor" or the ratio between the volume occupied by the spheres themselves, over the entire volume of the ordered structure. It's a measure of wasted space, and the packing factor for these two in particular are 0.74 (meaning 74% of the volume is taken up by bubbles). These two structures (fcc, face-centered cubic and hcp, hexagonal close packed) are special because they are said to be "close-packed." In other words, you can't pack the spheres any more efficiently with respect to density.
Knowing this, answer a question, "What is one reason metals might be so heavy relative to other materials like wood or plastic?"
tiny-waifu on November 9th, 2017 at 13:09 UTC »
Kinda looks like a giant crowd of people. The bubbles are just tiny little heads
Vachiie on November 9th, 2017 at 15:57 UTC »
Omg the GMOs are getting bad. Now all bubbles look the same.
Kellyanne_Conman on November 9th, 2017 at 16:19 UTC »
Interestingly, this is a well known structure for spherical objects. It's one of these two structures, but it's hard to tell which from the picture... Anyway, this is what an atomic arrangement often found in metals. These two structures are partially defined by their "packing factor" or the ratio between the volume occupied by the spheres themselves, over the entire volume of the ordered structure. It's a measure of wasted space, and the packing factor for these two in particular are 0.74 (meaning 74% of the volume is taken up by bubbles). These two structures (fcc, face-centered cubic and hcp, hexagonal close packed) are special because they are said to be "close-packed." In other words, you can't pack the spheres any more efficiently with respect to density.
Knowing this, answer a question, "What is one reason metals might be so heavy relative to other materials like wood or plastic?"