Notice how one ball bearing is surrounded by 6 others, and how the six form a hexagon. Notice how occasionally a ball bearing is missing from the pattern. Use the tweezers to remove one or more ball bearings from one place or from many different places. Gently vibrate the plate or the table. Notice how the patterns change.
Points produce lines and the lines move.
If you vibrate long enough notice how the lines and points more to the sides of the plate and vanish leaving one pattern covering the entire plate. This pattern is known as hexagonal packing. Each ball has six nearest neighbor balls touching it. The nearest neighbors form a hexagon. In two dimensions it is the regular packing that packs the largest number of balls into the smallest space.