how many hershey's kisses chocolates fit in a flat rate box ? (11 7/8 x 3 3/8 x 13 5/8 )?

Answer 1

11.875 x 3.375 x 13.625 = 546.064453125 cubic inches of packing space. Of course, boxes are generally measured from edge to edge. The inside of the box would provide less space for total volume area. Cardboard is about .125 inches thick. You'd need to take away two of these for each dimension (.25 inches).

So our new dimensions are: 11.625 x 3.125 x 13.375, so 485.888671875 cubic inches of free space inside the box.

One kiss individual weight: 4.56 grams each. I got this from the nutritional label. One serving is 9 pieces which is 41 grams.

volume based on water weight = 4.56 Grams = 0.2782683 Cubic inches per piece. Water probably weighs a bit more than chocolate because it has no air pockets. I'm sure chocolate has less gravity because of these microscopic air pockets. So this estimate is perhaps slightly high.

Double check the volume in relations to dimensions. A kiss is about 1" diameter by 1" tall, which gives a volume of 1/3 PI d^2 h /4 or about 0.26 cubic inches.

So we've estimated the volume with about 95% confidence. The kisses are not perfect conical shapes, but with the wrapper on they are pretty close, and for packing purposes, that is what we are interested in anyway.

So now we know the volume of a kiss, and the volume of the box. In an all-perfect world, if he kisses packed with 100% efficency, 1746 kisses would fit. If you just take the free space
divided by the individual volume.


We know that cones can't be packed with no empty space. I did a google search on packing ratios of conical shapes and found it to be around 60%. This seems right, as it would indicate that 40% of the in between space is not used.

So 60% of 1746 is 1048 kisses.

Answer 2

No idea, but you can always take the box to the grocery store, see how many bags fit in the box, then look at the nutrition label to see how many kisses are in the bag.