ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Dense Pack

Imagine you have a box full of little balls. You shake the box and the balls start to settle. When they all settle, some of the balls will have lots of space around them, but some of the balls will be packed very tightly together.

Dense pack is like packing the balls really tightly together so that there is almost no space left between them. It's like if you took a bunch of marbles and put them in a jar. If you put in only a few marbles, there will be lots of space for the marbles to move around in. But if you keep adding marbles until there's no more room, that's a dense pack.

We use dense pack for insulation in houses. It means putting lots and lots of little bits of material, like cellulose or fiberglass, into a wall or ceiling cavity, so that there is barely any room left for air to get through. This makes your house warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, and also helps to reduce noise.