27 July 2009

Plats diviseurs, or how the French cut cakes

Apparently in France they have an interesting solution to cake-cutting problems -- a plate with markings on the rim for the proper place to cut into 3, 5, 6, 7, or 9 slices, called the plat diviseur. See also here. You can buy them here; the site is in French. Some especially ornate examples are due to Paul Urfer, who appears to be the original inventor.

I found out about these from The Number Warrior, Jason Dyer. Unfortunately I have no use for one of these, because I live alone, in a small apartment where I couldn't reasonably have enough people over to need a whole cake, and so I do not buy a whole cake at once.

I suspect I have some French readers. Have you seen these before?

2 comments:

AA said...

An even more elaborate way to share a cake made it to arxiv.org recently, perhaps it will also be turned into some utensil soon :-)

On the complexity of envy-free cake cutting

Sknij said...

news de Paul Urfer
http://jinkstencil.jimdo.com/paul-urfer