Junk Food Geometry

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oyster-crackers.jpgI was about to post about the interesting shapes in the cookie cake tops at our grocery store (which I’ll do shortly), and I found myself getting distracted thinking about all of the interesting shapes in the snack aisle itself.

Tortilla chips can be in the form of triangles, although they can also appear as wedges of a circle.
doritos.jpgtortilla_chips.jpg

cheezit1.jpgThere are lots and lots of squares (though with the hole in the middle, the Cheeze-it® could be turned into a more interesting area problem).

I’m not sure about pentagons (does anyone know of any?), but there are some good examples of hexagons:
oyster-crackers.jpg

Many crackers are in the form of circles, and it’s possible that some of the oval crackers are actually ellipses. (I sense a future investigation.) And that’s not all! Cheerios®, bagels, and donuts all provide examples of tori, Hershey’s Kisses® make great cones, and of course there are the cans of hyperbolic paraboloids. Hmmm….maybe the producers of “Double Down” should take a field trip to the grocery store to brainstorm some of their next geometry questions!

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3 Responses to “Junk Food Geometry”

  1. Grocery Store Polygons: Cookie Cake Tops « 360 Says:

    […] Store Polygons: Cookie Cake Tops The post two days ago (Junk Food Geometry) focused on edible polygons, but perhaps my favorite examples of grocery store polygons are […]

  2. ashley Says:

    Personally, my favorite post on the blog was “Junk Food Geometry!” It really got me thinking of all the different shapes of food in the junk food isle. I mean there’s milano cookies that are shaped like elipses, chocolate chips that are shaped like miniature cones, etc. Then I got to thinking about the shapes that make up our daily lives. I mean we see the octagon stop signs, triangular yield signs, diamond shaped intersection signs, we’ve got cross walk lines, stop lines, dotted lines, solid lines, the world is full of shapes and lines! Until I read that blog, I never really thought about it. But, now I sit here and look around my dorm and notice the crescent shapes, the many square shapes (from my sticky notes), the rectangular shape of my iPod and all my picture frames, the sphere like shape of my snow globe, and the list goes on and on. It’s funny what you notice after reading something like that, now I know in these next few days I’ll notice all the shapes around campus, and think about that blog!

  3. Innis and Lauren Says:

    We love geometry class and we can’t wait for our “math experience” (aka PARTYYY) After looking at this website, we have learned so much! Who knew that food could be so many shapes? We just love polygons!!!

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