How to cut a sandwich

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"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought." - Albert Einstein

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

How to cut a sandwich

The most important issue in cutting a sandwich is the resulting crust ratio of the bread. I have found a way to reduce the crust ratio on a sandwich without cutting off and disposal of the crust. Cutting off the crust would be wasteful. Now the assumption I made is that the bread slice is approximately a square. If the bread is not a square then the following argument and calculations still hold, it would just be more difficult to prove.

bisect sandwich.bmp

You see, if you cut the bread into four pieces by bisecting each side of the whole sandwich orthogonally then the resulting pieces each have four sides. Two of the sides have crust. Therefore each smaller sandwich piece is 50% crust.

But, if you cut the sandwich into four pieces by cutting the whole sandwich along the two diagonals then each resulting piece has only three sides. Only one of the sides has crust. But that diagonal sandwich.bmp

crust side is longer than each of the two remaining sides. Assuming that the length of the two shorter non-crust sides are 1 unit each, then Pythagoras Theorem tells us that the crust side is 1.414 units long. The total circumference would be 3.414 units long. Thus this smaller sandwich piece is 41% crust.

Therefore the sandwich cut along the diagonal has 9% less crusty sandwich pieces! That is an improvement. The conclusion is we must all cut along the diagonal and our society will enjoy less crust in our lives and hopefully more meat. Another tidbit for better living from www.damon4.com, the most exciting place on the internet!

admin4 at 6:34 AM | (5) Comments | Add a comment | Permalink

Commments

Lovely said...

This blog is a clear example of how mathematical theories apply in real life so this is how Damon applies to his food......ssshhhhh!

Wednesday, October 11, 2006 6:58 PM

"Broski" said...

Thanks ... Now I have a craving for PB&J.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 11:03 PM

Matt Morrison said...

I've wanted to post a comment on every single article that i've read on this site but i'm so tired, after reading this blog I just had to say something ;) I haven't had this much fun reading blogs for ages!! Great stuff :D)

Friday, November 03, 2006 4:50 PM

Admin said...

Thanks Matt.

Monday, November 06, 2006 7:02 AM

Shanghai said...

Wow, even this becomes a engineering topics, very unique, an interesting topics.

Friday, September 03, 2010 4:27 AM