Place four pennies on a table such that each touches at least one other.

For what arrangement will the area of the convex hull of this shape be maximized?

Wow, I remember posting this.  I came up with the easy 3 penny version while actually playing around with some pennies. http://perplexus.info/show.php?pid=9349
And it seemed natural to ask about a fourth.  (When this got no comments I decided not to try for 5.)  It doesn't look like I got around to completely solving it myself.

Bractal's solution fits the way it is worded but is not intentional - I meant all pennies to be connected - nobody caught this wording error. 

I think Brian's solution is the one I had in mind, but I don't remember. 

Posted by Jer on 2016-01-31 11:03:45