New Scientist delves into the advanced mapping of pizza slicing for *everyone’s* preferences:
Most of us divide a pizza using straight cuts that all meet in the middle. But what if the centre of the pizza has a topping that some people would rather avoid, while others desperately want crust for dipping?
Mathematicians had previously come up with a recipe for slicing – formally known as a monohedral disc tiling – that gives you 12 identically shaped pieces, six of which form a star extending out from the centre, while the other six divide up the crusty remainder.
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Now Joel Haddley and Stephen Worsley of the University of Liverpool, UK, have generalised the technique to create even more ways to slice. The pair have proved you can create similar tilings from curved pieces with any odd number of sides – known as 5-gons, 7-gons and so on … then dividing them in two as before. “Mathematically there is no limit whatsoever,” says Haddley….
As with many mathematical results, its usefulness isn’t immediately obvious.
Diagrams and photographs at the link.