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

你已經(jīng)過了好幾次生日了，所以你覺得你很懂怎么切蛋糕，對嗎?

Don't count on it。

千萬別這么想。

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“數(shù)字狂”系列短片里，英國數(shù)學(xué)家亞歷克斯·貝洛斯詳細(xì)解釋了把蛋糕切成多個楔形的傳統(tǒng)方法，既不是科學(xué)的切法，也不是一個保留口感的切法。

"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。

"你沒有從蛋糕上極大限度地獲得美食帶來的愉悅，" 在短片里他這樣說道，并補(bǔ)充說一旦你切下一塊蛋糕，蛋糕的內(nèi)部就暴露在空氣中——然后它就會被風(fēng)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."

貝洛斯說，在一個多世紀(jì)以前，就已經(jīng)有一個更妙的切蛋糕的方法。在1906年，《自然雜志》刊登了一篇來自英國著名學(xué)者弗朗西斯·高爾頓的報告——“出于他的自娛自樂”——他在研究一個最絕妙的切蛋糕的方法。他寫道，這個目標(biāo)就是"讓蛋糕會被風(fēng)干的暴露面積盡可能縮小。"

The cake should be cut in parallel lines, starting in the centre, with the rectangular segments of the cake then taken out and eaten。

科學(xué)的切蛋糕方法是：在中間平行切兩刀，把中間切出的矩形蛋糕拿出來吃掉。

This would allow the cake to then be closed, provided it is one with icing, keep the sponge inside sealed and retaining its freshness。

這樣剩余的蛋糕還可以拼在一起，像一個完整的奶油蛋糕那樣存放。用這種方法就可以保持蛋糕內(nèi)部密封保鮮。