Very interesting! Thanks! I wonder if "length" is treated differently because of a preferred direction ("This Side Up"). Or perhaps ships & airplanes are long & thin, so "length" is treated differently for those reasons. Although, the airplane shipping containers that I have seen look like 1/2 of a sliced cylinder -- probably because they are loaded below the "deck". These airline shipping containers are also not very long -- less than 6' -- so their length is less than their radius. I'll have to do some research to see how far back L*G goes in the shipping biz. So for 2 dimensions we have "perimeter" and "girth" (presumably the perimeter of the convex hull); there doesn't seem to be a name for L+W+H in 3 dimensions. Perhaps there is a name for supremum girth, over all 2-D projections of the object. At 04:12 PM 3/5/2012, James Cloos wrote:
"HB" == Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> writes:
HB> So, given these constraints, is f(L,W,H)=C*(L+W+H) even close to optimal?
Probably not.
The package shipping companies (USP, USPS, FedEx, et al) tend to use lenght * girth, making that f(L,W,H) = C * L*(W+H). I've heard -- but cannot confirm -- that L*G traces back to nautical shipping.
I can confirm that USP and USPS, at least, were already using L*G back in the '70s.
-JimC -- James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com> OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6