If you haven’t already, check out my introduction to circles!
One day, Orange and Grey were both too tired to cook. And so, they decided to order some nice pizza to eat instead.
“I would like the Seafood Feast,” said Orange. “I love tuna and salmon.”
“But I want the Chicken Chow,” said Grey. “You know how I don’t like seafood! How about this – we will each get one pizza so we can both enjoy our meal.” Orange agreed, so they dialed Pete’s Pizza.
A friendly voice answered the call. “Welcome to Pete’s Pizza. How can I help you today?”
“Yes, hello. We would like to order one 8 inch Seafood Feast and one 8 inch Chicken Chow Pizza,” Orange said.
The voice on the other end announced, “Well you’re in luck, because we are currently having a special sale on pizzas, you can get one 12 inch for the price of 2 8 inch pizzas! Would you like to convert your order?”
“Why would we want to downgrade our size?” whispered Grey. “Two 8 inch pizzas is bigger than a single 12 inch pizza.”
“Well let’s see…” pondered Orange. “For one 8 inch pizza, what’s the area?”
“If the diameter is 8 inches, the radius is 4, right?” started Grey. “And I know the equation for area of a circle is π x radius2. That means, the area of each 8 inch pizza is 16π square inches.”
“Right,” added Orange. “If we do the same calculation for a 12 inch pizza, we see the radius is 6. By plugging that into the equation, we get 36π square inches.”
“I see!” Grey exclaimed. “If we order two 8 inch pizzas, we will each get 16π square inches of pizza. However, if we instead order 1 large pizza and split it, we get half of 36, or 18π square inches of pizza each instead. Right then, we’ll order one 12 inch pizza and split it.”
And so, our two math cats successfully ordered their pizza and had a wonderful meal.
I like this story. A very cool application of math in a very familiar experience. Everyone likes pizza, but why do they always market and see it in a circular shape?
Thanks for the comment! From my understanding, circular pizzas are easiest to make due to the stretching and rolling of the dough. Additionally, circles are easy to split into equal sized slices- just cut through the center and you can make as many identically sized and shaped pieces as you need. And of course, circles just look cool :).