June 24, 2014

The Right Way to Cut a Cake

There's been a trend lately where random people on the internet like to tell you've been doing 'X' wrong all of these years and there's some revolutionary trick to it that you've been missing. Some people have dubbed these "life hacks" but I've seen a lot of these and tend to think a better descriptor might be "solutions to problems you didn't even know you had."








 For instance, people on my facebook newsfeed alerted me that I have been cutting cherry tomatoes wrong all of this time. The technique may look fancy, but in reality it would probably take me a lot less time just to cut them by hand, using a smaller knife and it is very unlikely I'd ever use this technique.

But recently I saw a video about Sir Francis Galton's theory on the most efficient way to cut a cake using scientific principles. Apparently this was a personal problem, as he and his niece shared a small cake every few days. It seems like a viable solution in a time before plastic wrap.


Galton is known as one of the fathers of race eugenics but is also responsible for a number of brilliant inventions such as the modern fingerprinting system. He was a half-cousin of Charles Darwin and inspired by his work. I doubt he had any idea that his cake theory would make such a stir 100 years after he published it. 

1 comment:

  1. Huh, I'll have to watch later because I've probably been cutting them wrong myself!

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