How many fit — Earths, balls and pallets

Open the tab How many fit (key 2). Two fields name the objects: What to fit and Where to fit it. Both accept any object from the list or your own entry.

Earths in the Sun

Choose File → Templates… → How many Earths fit in the Sun?. With Count by set to Volume the answer is about 1.3 million: the cube of the diameter ratio. That is a pure ratio — it assumes you could melt the Earths and pour them in.

Real balls leave gaps. Set Gaps between round things to Densest possible packing (74 %) — the best that equal spheres can do, proved by Thomas Hales — or to Poured in at random (64 %). The count drops accordingly; Notes explain the factor.

Your own shapes

Enter your own objects in the fields:

• a box: Box = 40 × 30 × 20 cm
• a ball: Ball = ⌀ 22 cm
• a length: Rope = 12 m

Swap the two exchanges item and container. Count by offers Length (end to end), Area, Volume and Whole boxes in layers.

Pallets on a trailer

Open the template EUR-pallets on a trailer. Count by is Whole boxes in layers: Sizewise tries rows in two orientations on the floor, stacks layers up to the height and draws one layer seen from above. A 13.6 m trailer takes 34 EUR-pallets on the floor (two rows of 17, each pallet 1.2 m across).

Keep boxes upright (third dimension is the height) stops Sizewise from tipping boxes on their side — right for pallets and anything marked “this way up”.

The facts list shows the Exact ratio, the Layers and the count Per layer, and Notes show the space used. The box count is a guaranteed minimum: rows in two orientations are tried, irregular mixed patterns are not.

Next steps

• One million dollars in cash reuses the pallet packing for banknotes.
• The tool sizewise-fit-count gives scripts and assistants the same counts.