TY - JOUR
T1 - Packing a cake into a box
AU - Skopenkov, Mikhail
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: The author is grateful to R. Clawson, B. R. Frenkin, A. A. Glazyrin, I. V. Izmestiev, and M. V. Prasolov for useful discussions. The author is also grateful to his wife Anastasia for some figures and cakes. The author was supported in part by the Moebius Contest Foundation for Young Scientists and the Euler Foundation.
PY - 2011/6/13
Y1 - 2011/6/13
N2 - Given a triangular cake and a box in the shape of its mirror image, how can the cake be cut into a minimal number of pieces so that it can be put into the box? The cake has icing, so we are not allowed to put it into the box upside down. V. G. Boltyansky asked this question in 1977 and showed that three pieces always suffice. In this paper we provide examples of cakes that cannot be cut into two pieces to be put into the box. This shows that three is the answer to Boltyansky's question. We also give examples of cakes which can be cut into two pieces. © THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA.
AB - Given a triangular cake and a box in the shape of its mirror image, how can the cake be cut into a minimal number of pieces so that it can be put into the box? The cake has icing, so we are not allowed to put it into the box upside down. V. G. Boltyansky asked this question in 1977 and showed that three pieces always suffice. In this paper we provide examples of cakes that cannot be cut into two pieces to be put into the box. This shows that three is the answer to Boltyansky's question. We also give examples of cakes which can be cut into two pieces. © THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/561765
UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1003.2101v1
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79956087903&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.4169/amer.math.monthly.118.05.424
DO - 10.4169/amer.math.monthly.118.05.424
M3 - Article
SN - 0002-9890
VL - 118
SP - 424
JO - The American Mathematical Monthly
JF - The American Mathematical Monthly
IS - 5
ER -