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You've had your share of birthdays so you know perfectly well how to cut a
cake, right?
你已经过了好几次生日了，所以你觉得你很懂怎么切蛋糕，对吗?
Don't count on it.
千万别这么想。
As British mathematician Alex Bellos explains in a fun new video from his
Numberphile series, the traditional approach to divvying up a cake -- cutting a
series of wedges -- just doesn't cut it from a scientific standpoint，or from the
standpoint of flavor.
在“数字狂”系列短片里，英国数学家亚历克斯·贝洛斯详细解释了把蛋糕切成多个楔形的方法，不是科学的切法，而且也不是一个保留口感的切法。
"You're not maximizing the amount of gastronomic pleasure that you can make
from this cake," he says in the video, adding that once you cut out a wedge, you
expose the inside of the cake to the air -- and it dries out.
"你没有从蛋糕上极大限度地获得美食带来的愉悦，"
在短片里他这样说道，并补充说一旦你切下一块蛋糕，蛋糕的内部就暴露在空气中——然后它就会被风干。
A better way, Bellos says, has existed for more than a century. In 1906 the
journal Nature ran a letter from Francis Galton in which the celebrated British
polymath offered -- "for his own amusement and satisfaction" -- what he
considered a superior method of cutting a cake. The goal, he wrote, was to cut
it "so as to leave a minimum surface to become dry."
贝洛斯说，在一个多世纪以前，就已经有一个更妙的切蛋糕的方法。在1906年，《自然杂志》刊登了一篇来自英国著名学者弗朗西斯·高尔顿的报告——“出于他的自娱自乐”——他在研究一个最绝妙的切蛋糕的方法。他写道，这个目标就是"令蛋糕上最少的表面变干"。
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发表于 2016-7-10 18:36:23
