Why do they not use other shapes , such as a sphere or cuboid , why is it just restricted to cylinder?
In: Economics
Packaging stuff adds cost. The material costs something, and it’s added weight that makes shipping more expensive. It may not be much per can, but for millions of cans it adds up. So, you want to minimize the amount of material needed for packaging.
A sphere is the shape with the least surface area per volume. It’s also the strongest, since any stresses are evenly distributed across the entire surface. A sphere takes the least amount of material.
However, spheres are bad for packing and stacking. Whenever you stack spheres there’s a lot of space between them. That’s bad for shipping, obviously. You want to maximize the packing space so you can fit the most units per shipping container.
A cube (or cuboid) maximizes the packing because there is no space at all between them. But cubes take a lot of material. Those corners become points where stress gathers, which means you need even more extra material to keep them strong.
So, you need a compromise. A shape that’s almost as strong as a sphere and uses as little material as possible, but also packs and stacks almost as well as cubes. It also needs to be easy to make. Which shape is both sort of round and sort of square? Cylinders.
Edit: [Engineer Guy](https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw) for an explanation from a real engineer, and also additional information about how cans are designed.
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