Re: From Mssrs Pratchett & Gaimain
I suspect "packing" is one of those useful abstractions like "spin" and "colour" that don't translate exactly to the underlying quantum thing they kind-of represent, in the same way that we draw little circles around pictures of berry-like nuclei to represent electron orbitals (and use the word orbital, which implies an orbit). Meanwhile, the actual orbitals are probability density distribution fields which are quantised via the Schrödinger equation, making pretty shapes like circles or hourglasses, and the actual electron could be literally anywhere, and that's before we even get into hybrid orbitals...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
