A glass Christmas tree decoration is made from three different types of sphere. Seven small spheres, eight middle-sized spheres and one large sphere.
Spheres of each type are identical. The eight middle sized spheres are arranged around one of the small spheres. The small sphere touches each of the spheres around it and each middle-sized sphere touches three other middle-sized spheres. The remaining six small spheres are arranged so that they each touch four middle sized spheres. The large sphere surrounds all of the other spheres touching every other sphere except for the small one in the centre. A cross-section of the decoration on this plane 
looks like this:
Assuming the glass to be of negligible thickness, find the ratio of the radii of the three sizes of sphere. What fraction of the volume of the large sphere is occupied by the small (not middle-sized) spheres?
Using the cross-section shown in the problem:
The radius of the large outside sphere will be the sum of the distance from the centre to a vertex of the cube and the radius of a middle-sized sphere.
The radius of the central small sphere (and therefore all of the other small spheres) will be the difference between the same two distances.
Let the radius of the middle-sized spheres be 
. The cube would then have side lengths of 
.
The distance from the centre of the cube to one of the vertices is therefore 
which simplifies to 
.
The radius of the large outside sphere is therefore 
.
The radius of a small sphere is 
.
The ratio of the radii is 
which simplifies to 
.
The scale factor of enlargement from the small sphere’s radius to the large sphere’s radius is 
which simplifies by rationalizing the denominator to 
.
The scale factor for the volume is therefore 
.
There are 7 small spheres so the fraction of the volume they occupy is 
.
If you wish to rationalize the denominator here, expanding the denominator gives 
which simplifies to 
.