That design should make the Rumsfeld really happy. -----Original Message----- From: math-fun-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:math-fun-bounces@mailman.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Ed Pegg Jr Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 23:55 To: math-fun Subject: [math-fun] 51 star design I started looking at the packing problem for maximizing the size of n stars within a golden rectangle. The solution for 2 is interesting, and for 5 is bizarre. But the stars wind up pointing in a variety of directions, and it doesn't look as nice. I did find a nice method for packing similarly oriented touching stars, and 51 of them fit into a pentagon perfectly, so I made a picture. http://www.mathpuzzle.com/flag51.gif There are both loose and tight versions of the packing. I used the loose version for the flag picture. It has a number of interesting mathematical properties. For the tight packing, see http://www.mathpuzzle.com/51stars.gif --Ed Pegg Jr. _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun