two spheres touching. The height of which or the z-coordinate difference between the two "planes" is . This, combined with the offsets in the x and y-coordinates gives the centers of the first row in the B plane: The second row's coordinates follow the pattern first described above and are: The difference to the next plane, the A plane, is again in the z-direction and a shift in the x and y to match those x- and y-coordinates of the first A plane. In general, the coordinates of sphere centers can be written as: where i, j and k are indices starting at 0 for the x-, y- and z-coordinates. Miller indices Crystallographic features of HCP systems, such as vectors and atomic plane families, can be described using a four-value Miller index notation ( hkil ) in which the third index i denotes a convenient but degenerate component which is equal to −h − k. The h, i and k index directions are separated by 120°, and are thus not orthogonal; the l component is mutually perpendicular to the h, i and k index directions. Filling the remaining space The FCC and HCP packings are the densest known packings of equal spheres with the highest symmetry (smallest repeat units). Denser sphere packings are known, but they involve unequal sphere packing. A packing density of 1, filling space completely, requires non-spherical shapes, such as honeycombs. Replacing each contact point between two spheres with an edge connecting the centers of the touching spheres produces tetrahedrons and octahedrons of equal edge lengths. The FCC arrangement produces the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb. The HCP arrangement produces the gyrated tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb. If, instead, every sphere is augmented with the points in space that are closer to it than to any other sphere, the duals of these honeycombs are produced: the rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb for FCC, and the trapezo-rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb for HCP. Spherical bubbles appear in soapy water in a FCC or HCP arrangement when the water in the gaps between the bubbles drains out. This pattern also approaches the rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb or trapezo-rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb. However, such FCC or HCP foams of very small liquid content are unstable, as they do not satisfy Plateau's laws. The Kelvin foam and the Weaire–Phelan foam are more stable, having smaller interfacial energy in the limit of a very small liquid content. There are two types of interstitial holes