How to hold your pizza slice

Do you know why despite your best efforts, the slice of pizza you are about to enjoy flops over and dangles from your fingers?

It has nothing to do with either a non-stiff crust or extra toppings. You just need to learn a bit of science about how to hold your slice right.

The cue lies in a powerful mathematical result about curved surfaces invented by the German mathematical genius Carl Friedrich Gauss in the 19th century.

He named it Theorema Egregium - Latin for excellent or remarkable theorem.

This is how it works for pizza.

When the pizza is flat, it has zero curvature.

When you pick up a slice, fold the pizza slice sideways in a U-shape.

This way, you are forcing it to become flat in the other direction - the one that points towards your mouth.

This will keep the slice from flopping over.

The theorem assures that one direction of the slice must always remain flat - no matter how you bend it, the pizza must retain a trace of its original flatness, wired.com reported.