English

Cutting cakes and kissing circles

History and Overview 2021-07-13 v2

Abstract

To divide a cake into equal sized pieces most people use a knife and a mixture of luck and dexterity. These attempts are often met with varying success. Through precise geometric constructions performed with the knife replacing Euclid's straightedge and without using a compass we find methods for solving certain cake-cutting problems exactly. Since it is impossible to exactly bisect a circular cake when its center is not known, our constructions need to use multiple cakes. Using three circular cakes we present a simple method for bisecting each of them or to find their centers. Moreover, given a cake with marked center we present methods to cut it into n pieces of equal size for n=3,4 and 6. Our methods are based upon constructions by Steiner and Cauer from the 19th and early 20th century.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.11458,
  title  = {Cutting cakes and kissing circles},
  author = {Alexander Müller-Hermes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.11458},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

9 pages, 11 figures. Simplified proof of main result

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:06:40.854Z