Packing 11 unit squares in a square  

Letter from Martin Gardner

Letter from Martin Gardner, 1980-01-10


best packing 1979
Best known packing, Walter Trump, 1979


This packing is absolutely rigid, no unit square can be rotated or translated.
Slight improvements of the packing are not possible.
Any improved packing has to have an essentially different geometrical arrangement of the unit squares.

      For more details see:
  Packing-11-squares.pdf  

  Dynamic construction of the packing  

  Improving packings  

Reference:
Gardner, Martin. Fractal Music, Hypercards, and More Mathematical Recreations
from Scientific American Magazine
. New York: W. H. Freeman, pp. 299-300, 1992.

 Walter Trump, Nürnberg, Germany, ms(at)trump.de, © 2023-02-27 (last modified: 2023-02-27)