There is actually a science behind slicing a pizza pie. While foodies may already know that a pie comes with eight slices, mathematicians from the University of Liverpool have invented new ways to cut slices of pizza using different geometric designs.
Joel Haddley and Stephen Worsley published a paper on ArXiv that reveals their new ways to slice pizza. They first described the already-known technique of slicing pizza that uses the process of monohedral disc-tiling, which consists of cutting six curved pieces and then cutting those in half to get 12 identical slices.
"Such tilings are produced on a daily basis by pizza chefs by taking radial cuts distributed evenly around the center of the pizza," the researchers write.
The mathematicians then served a more complex technique, using monohedral disc-tiling as a starting off point. They found if you slice curved triangle-shapped pieces and then divide those slices into two, you will be able to make an infinite amount of geometric patterns.
However, starting off with "5-gons,' "7-gons," "9-gons," etc. shapes and then cutting them in half, you will be able to create intricately-shaped slices of pizza with some cool designs.
While this is a pretty impressive way to serve pizza, there is no real-world usefulness of the findings besides being mathematically interesting. However, there could still be other ways that have yet to be explored.
"A very difficult challenge would be to prove that we have found all such solutions," Haddley said. "We also still haven't found a tiling with the property that the center is contained entirely within a tile, or such that the center is on an edge of a tile. In all our examples, it is on a vertex (corner). To my knowledge, no one has, and I've no idea whether such a tiling exists, and if it doesn't exist how to prove it doesn't."
Still, if you are planning a pizza party and want to avoid slices with particular toppings, this method could come in handy.
Source: Motherboard
Photo: Jenn Durfey | Flickr
