This article on BBC News caught my eye because it has “maths” in the headline. Yes, I’m that easily pleased.
Somewhere in the middle, it says that myHermes requires the “volumetric area” of a parcel to be less than 225cm. That’s right: the “volumetric area” is neither a volume nor an area but a length. Anyway, the formula for volumetric area of a package with sides $a,b,c$, where $a \leq b \leq c$, is
\[ 2(a+b) + c \]
(Importantly, $a$ and $b$ are always the two shortest sides of the package)
So the constraint is
\[ 2(a+b) + c \leq 225 \]
In the next paragraph is the puzzling statement that the maximum allowable volume for a package is $82.68$ litres, or $82680$ cm3. How did they get that?
I decided to do some calculus of variations, or whatever it’s called.