 Maximum-volume open rectangular box at fixed surface area

For a lidless rectangular parallelepiped with positive dimensions $l,w,h$ and prescribed external surface area $S=lw+2lh+2wh$, the largest volume is attained at $l=w=2h=\sqrt{S/3}$. The arithmetic-geometric mean inequality applied to $lw,2lh,2wh$ giveswith equality exactly when these three face-area terms are equal. This proves both the claimed global bound and its attainable equality case. Lagrange multipliers produce the same dimensions from the interior stationarity equations. The weighted open-box minimization is the corresponding fixed-volume formulation with general positive face weights.