Circle packing in the context of "Robert W. Brooks"

In geometry, a sphere packing is an arrangement of non-overlapping spheres within a containing space. The spheres considered are usually all of identical size, and the space is usually three-dimensional Euclidean space. However, sphere packing problems can be generalised to consider unequal spheres, spaces of other dimensions (where the problem becomes circle packing in two dimensions, or hypersphere packing in higher dimensions) or to non-Euclidean spaces such as hyperbolic space.

A typical sphere packing problem is to find an arrangement in which the spheres fill as much of the space as possible. The proportion of space filled by the spheres is called the packing density of the arrangement. As the local density of a packing in an infinite space can vary depending on the volume over which it is measured, the problem is usually to maximise the average or asymptotic density, measured over a large enough volume.

In crystallography, interstitial sites, holes or voids are the empty space that exists between the packing of atoms (spheres) in the crystal structure.

The holes are easy to see if you try to pack circles together; no matter how close you get them or how you arrange them, you will have empty space in between. The same is true in a unit cell; no matter how the atoms are arranged, there will be interstitial sites present between the atoms. These sites or holes can be filled with other atoms (interstitial defect). The picture with packed circles is only a 2D representation. In a crystal lattice, the atoms (spheres) would be packed in a 3D arrangement. This results in different shaped interstitial sites depending on the arrangement of the atoms in the lattice.