Three friends are dividing up a pizza that has not been pre sliced, but only wish to make two straight line cuts, dividing the pie into three even pieces. If the center of the pizza is on the origin of a graph, the radius is six inches, and the pizza is to be divided using only vertical cuts, how far from the origin must the vertical cuts be made?

(In reply to re(2): solution by goFish)

I don't think numerical work can be avoided here. I will be interested to see the official solution. I used the online applet from

 http://www.math.tamu.edu/~tom.kiffe/Tools/tools.html

to solve arcsin(x)-.523598776+ x*sqrt(1-x^2)=0 (the constant is pi/6, of course). This plots out to almost a straight line over x=0 to x=.5, by the way.

Posted by Richard on 2005-12-30 17:00:34