ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Square packing in a circle

Okay kiddo, let me explain square packing in a circle. Imagine you have a big round pizza, and you want to put as many square slices as possible on it without leaving any space in between them.

Now, how do you do that? Well, first you have to understand that squares can fit together nicely without any gaps if their sides are all the same length. So, you need to make sure you cut your pizza into the right size squares.

Next, you have to be careful how you arrange the squares. It's kind of like when you play with blocks and try to stack them in a neat tower without them falling over - you need to make sure each square is touching the ones next to it, but not squishing them.

Now, no matter how hard you try, there will always be some space left over between the squares and the edge of the pizza. That's just how circles and squares work together. But you can try to make that leftover space as small as possible by stacking the squares as close to the edge as you can without going over.

If you do all of this just right, you'll end up with a pizza that looks like it's covered in perfect square slices with hardly any space in between them. And that's how packing squares into a circle works!