Mathematics · Study 054
Circle Packing
Circles appear at random and grow until they touch a neighbour or the edge, filling the canvas with up to 900 non-overlapping discs.
What you're looking at
A new circle is seeded at a random point that is not inside any existing circle. It grows half a pixel per frame and freezes the instant it would touch another circle or the border. Early circles claim large territories. Late arrivals squeeze into the gaps, so sizes range over two orders of magnitude.
The idea behind it
Greedy packings like this are how many generative posters and maps are made, and they relate to old questions about how densely circles can cover a plane. The best possible arrangement of equal circles is the honeycomb lattice, covering about 90.7 percent of the area.
Try this
Press and drag over circles to pop them. New ones grow into the space you clear.
