Problem
of the
Week
PROBLEM 85

The following problem came from the "Discovering Geometry" Newsletter.  Thanks to Mary Jane Sterling for bringing it to me.

A hideous bug has landed on your slice of marshmallow pizza. You have only one opportunity to cut off a part of the slice, which you must then discard, with a single straight cut.  Since you like pizza crust best of all, you don't want to discard any of the crust.  How can you do this so as to minimize the amount of pizza that you will lose? See the figure on the left.

Note:  You may assume that the angle q is less than p/2.   Also assume that the bug is a point so there is no issue of slicing the poor bug in half!


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