Vacuum packing preventing the evaporation of volatile components. It is also commonly used to store dry foods over a long period of time, such as cereals, nuts, cured meats, cheese, smoked fish, coffee, and potato chips (crisps). On a more short term basis, vacuum packing can also be used to store fresh foods, such as vegetables, meats, and liquids, because it inhibits bacterial growth. Vacuum packing greatly reduces the bulk of non-food items. For example, clothing and bedding can be stored in bags evacuated with a domestic vacuum cleaner or a dedicated vacuum sealer. This technique is sometimes used to compact household
Sphere packing the close packing density for radius ratios up to 0.659786. Upper bounds for the density that can be obtained in such binary packings have also been obtained. In many chemical situations such as ionic crystals, the stoichiometry is constrained by the charges of the constituent ions. This additional constraint on the packing, together with the need to minimize the Coulomb energy of interacting charges leads to a diversity of optimal packing arrangements. Although the concept of circles and spheres can be extended to hyperbolic space, finding the densest packing becomes much more difficult. In a hyperbolic space there is no