Geometry in food and at home

If we keep talking about geometric shapes in our daily lives, one of our daily habits for maintaining a

healthy lifestyle is eating. Therefore, we have food that provides us with references to different geometric

shapes.


A very common example chosen for teaching, due to its potential to explain various mathematical

concepts, is pizza. It's a food that children generally enjoy, making it a great example of an element

of interest for students. Its shape is primarily circular, although rectangular pizzas also exist.

When circular, it is usually cut into triangular slices. Furthermore, it is used as an example for

teaching fractions: “If I divided the pizza into eight pieces and five were eaten, 3/8 remains".


Figure 1



Note. Circular pizza in triangular slices 


We can also find other foods, fruits, for example, are classified as healthy and recommended for daily

consumption. Many of them are spherical, like oranges, grapes, or watermelons. But what is a sphere?

A sphere has properties similar to a circle; the difference is that a sphere is three-dimensional, while a

circle is two-dimensional (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.).Why are most fruits usually spherical? The primary purpose of fruits is to protecttheir seeds, and nature's choice of a spherical shape is due to the ability to store a greater volume

within a spherical surface, which might explain it (ABC, 2023).


Figure 2



Note. An orange with spherical shape. 


On the other hand, we have oval shapes, for example, in kiwis or mangoes. Similarly, when

we cut fruits like watermelon or melon, we get triangular slices.


Figure 3



Note. Kiwi with oval shape. 


On the other hand, a popular breakfast choice for children at school is the sandwich, whose shape isthe square. Furthermore, many geometric shapes are found in their houses. For instance, rectangles

appear on televisions, doors, and beds; squares on windows and cushions. Cylinders are seen, for

example, in toilet paper rolls, cans, and bottles. Circles are found in objects like clocks. 


The interesting thing about objects from home is that although some of them have always the same

shape, others depend on the decision of the family that has bought them. For example, tables can be

rectangular or circular. The same thing happens with the plates. This will be very positive for an activity

that we could ask our students to do as they won´t have the same geometric shapes in the same objects

as their classmates. 


A possible activity consists of asking them to do a collage drawing or sticking images of objects to

create a collage with different geometric shapes that they find in their own home, including rectangular,

cylindrical, circular,... Later, they will present it orally to the rest of the class, which promotes an

interdisciplinary activity as it integrates the fields of Mathematics, Artistic Education and Language

(oral expression when presenting their work). 


Also, we could show students an attractive video to review geometric shapes that we find in our daily

lives.


Video 1



Note. Smile and Learn - English. (2018)


References:

ABC. (2023). ¿Por qué la mayoría de las frutas tienden a ser esféricas?

https://www.abc.es/ciencia/mayoria-frutas-tienden-esfericas-20230915145607-nt.html?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.es%2Fciencia%2Fmayoria-frutas-tienden-esfericas-20230915145607-nt.html

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Sphere. 

https://www.britannica.com/science/sphere

Smile and Learn - English. (2018, November 30). Geometric Plane Shapes For Kids- Primary Vocabulary (Video file). Youtube. https://youtu.be/4tkRwMHu9NQ?si=slku27BOo84PbDYr


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