英美文化：教你如何科学地切蛋糕

　　英美文化：教你如何科学地切蛋糕

　　You've had your share of birthdays so you know perfectly well how to cut a cake, right?

　　你已经过了好几次生日了，所以你觉得你很懂怎么切蛋糕，对吗?

　　Don't count on it.

　　千万别这么想。

　　As British mathematician Alex Bellos explains in a fun new video from his Numberphile series, the traditional approach to divvying up a cake -- cutting a series of wedges -- just doesn't cut it from a scientific standpoint，or from the standpoint of flavor.

　　在“数字狂系列短片里，英国数学家亚历克斯·贝洛斯详细解释了把蛋糕切成多个楔形的方法，不是科学的切法，而且也不是一个保留口感的切法。

　　"You're not maximizing the amount of gastronomic pleasure that you can make from this cake," he says in the video, adding that once you cut out a wedge, you expose the inside of the cake to the air -- and it dries out.

　　"你没有从蛋糕上极大限度地获得美食带来的愉悦，" 在短片里他这样说道，并补充说一旦你切下一块蛋糕，蛋糕的内部就暴露在空气中——然后它就会被风干。

　　A better way, Bellos says, has existed for more than a century. In 1906 the journal Nature ran a letter from Francis Galton in which the celebrated British polymath offered -- "for his own amusement and satisfaction" -- what he considered a superior method of cutting a cake. The goal, he wrote, was to cut it "so as to leave a minimum surface to become dry."

　　贝洛斯说，在一个多世纪以前，就已经有一个更妙的切蛋糕的方法。在1906年，《自然杂志》刊登了一篇来自英国著名学者弗朗西斯·高尔顿的报告——“出于他的自娱自乐——他在研究一个最绝妙的切蛋糕的方法。他写道，这个目标就是"令蛋糕上最少的表面变干"。