How many golf balls can fit in a 5 gallon bucket?

Answer 1

Well that depends on the suitcase, specifically the interior dimensions of the suitcase.

The most efficient arrangement of spheres within a space has been a little puzzle in maths for some time. The Kepler conjecture says that the "face-centered cubic" is the most efficient with almost 75% of the space occupied.

I googled to see if there was anything new on the subject and lo and behold, someone actually went to the trouble to write a program that can solve this puzzle for any space. The face-centered cubic may not be the most efficient arrangement in some spaces. See links for more details.

Thank you for asking this question. If I had not seen your question today I would not have looked for nor found this interesting news.

Answer 2

A single Golf ball will take up just barely under 3square inches. However, the number of golf balls that will fit in a suitcase will vary greatly depending on the size of the suitcase. A good estimate would be to see how many square inches of volume a suitcase has and divide it by 3 since that is how much space a single golf ball takes up.
FERMI PROBLEM. CALCULATIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS

In a suitcase with 8 inches in height, 20 inches in width and 28 inches in length and golf balls in 1.7 inchs in diameter THIS IS THE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM.

Remember it is a 3D problem (3 dimensions)

find volume 4/3pi r cubed = 2.57 in cubed

28*8*20= 4480

4480/2.57 = 1743

1743 GOLF BALLS FIT IN A SUITCASE

Answer 3

Golf crates, similar to milk crates, will fit 7 balls X 7 balls X 6 balls high. (294 min)

This is Simple Cubic structure: Volume= 14 X 14 X 12 r(radius=1)= 2352

Volume one ball= (4/3)pi r^3=4.19

no. of balls = (2352 X .52) /4.19 =291

If Body Centred Cubic (Golf ball pyramid - factor = .68) # balls= 381(?)

In practice they hold about 300 (341 - tight fit). The BCC structure is difficult to maintain in a crate moving about. (The actual structure is a rectangular quasi -BCC apf about .60)

see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_packing_factor]

or go golfing!!

[Further, a crate made from the same mold as milk crates, will hold 8 layers : (4 X 49) + (4 X 36) = 340 with space left over. One more layer (389) will not allow the crates to be stacked. Pour the BCC stacked crate into another (random alignment) and the crate will fill up (340). The rule of thumb is three crates/1000 balls. ]

[For FCC stacking, each layer has eight rows alternating 7 balls and six balls - (4X 7)+(4X6)= 52/layer. The crate should hold just(!) seven tiers. This gives 364!. Again, try pouring the FCC stacked crate in to another (random structure) and the second crate will overflow! Note as above, that the larger the container the more the packing efficiency approaches the theoretical packing factors. Simple Cubic: pi/6=0.52, BCC: pi X 3^(.5)/8=0.68 and FCC: pi*2^(.5)/6=0.74 ]

You are still better off doing less counting and playing more golf!

Answer 4

A 5-gallon bucket full of golf balls would contain about 300 balls.

Using US gallons (3785.41 cc), the volume of the bucket would be 18927 cm3.

The smallest USGA regulation ball is 1.68" or 4.2672 cm in diameter. If you were to grind them up, you could fit 465 golf balls, each with a volume of 40.68 cm3. However, stacking round balls in a cylindrical bucket wastes a considerable amount of space.

Answer 5

Depends on the size of the box