The nutritional label on a brand of frozen pizza states that the serving size is 1/3 of a pizza. This is absurd. The usual ways of slicing pizzas result in a power of 2 number of slices (8 slices usually). Slicing up a pizza so that the number of slices is divisible by three is certainly done by at most a tiny number of people who eat only cold pizza. Those who slice pizzas into a power of 2 number of slices and who need to know the nutritional facts about the pizza they consume have to do conversions before they can eat any of this brand of pizza.

I've been thinking about how to slice a pizza so that the number of slices is divisible by 3, every slice has approximately the same area (pretending that a pizza has no thickness), and no direct measuring of angles is made. We will assume that a pizza cutter is used to cut the pizza up into slices.

The method I give here is not the simplest method, but it prevents the slicer from making too much of a mess.

1. Eyeball the center of the pizza (we are assuming the pizza is round), and slice the pizza in half with a straight cut that goes through the center. Each half of the pizza will now be cut into 3 pieces. Do the following steps on one of the halves and then repeat on the other half.
2. Now we need to make something that will work as a suitable compass. Two wooden spoons with long handles should do.
   • Hold the bowls of the spoons together with one hand, place the end of one handle at the center of the straight edge of the pizza half, and rotate the bowl of the other spoon until the end of its handle reaches one of the ends of the straight edge. The distance between the ends of the two handles measures the radius of the semicircular pizza half. Grasp the bowls firmly so that the spoons can no longer rotate.
   • Keep the end of the handle at the end of the straight edge in place and rotate the spoon compass around this point until the end of the other handle reaches the circular boundary of the pizza half. Mark this spot with the pizza slicer.
   • Use the pizza slicer to make a cut from the center of the straight edge to the spot that is marked on the circular boundary. There are now two slices. One slice has a peak angle of 60 degrees, and the other slice has a peak angle of 120 degrees. Cut the 120 degree slice in half (eyeball this instead of doing another construction) to obtain 3 slices which have equal areas.

The above procedure gives 6 slices which all have the same area. The method isn't difficult, but when I take a pizza out of the oven, I don't want to delay eating it by making special size slices. I'm a power of 2 slicer all the way.

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