Why Is It Called Pizza? This 'Maths Formula' Defining Pizza Will Blow Your Mind

While the particular explanation is not new as a video was uploaded back in December 2021, a Twitter post shared recently has made the pizza 'formula' viral.

The pizza 'formula' is going viral.

Source : Getty

An image being shared widely on WhatsApp and other platforms has left people in splits as it presents a bizarre ‘mathematical equation’ to define the popular food dish from Italy, pizza. While this particular explanation is not new as a video with the full description was uploaded back in December 2021, a Twitter post shared recently by ‘The World Of Engineering’ handle has now made this viral.

Take a look at the pictorial description of the ‘definition’ of pizza being circulated online.

This is why it’s called ‘pizza’ 🍕 pic.twitter.com/Rqj0ySSd7F

— World of Engineering (@engineers_feed) July 3, 2022

At the time of writing, the post had seen over 11,500 retweets, nearly 62,000 likes, and more than 1,100 comments. The YouTube video has been viewed over 18 lakh times.  

‘Why It’s Called Pizza’ 

‘Defining’ pizza, the image in the post takes its thickness as ‘a’ and radius as ‘z’ to declare its ‘volume’ to be ‘πz²a’, which translates to ‘pi-zz-a’.

This appears to be a rip-off of the volume formula for cylinder shape. For the uninitiated, there are different volume formulas for various geometric figures, and that for a cylinder is ‘πr²h’, wherein ‘r’ = radius of the circular base and ‘h’ = height.

While the fun Twitter post has done its job, that is leaving readers amused, many have pointed out how replacing ‘r’ and ‘h’ with ‘z’ and ‘a’, respectively, is not “acceptable”.

Check out some of the reactions:

Never!! I would have never taken radius as 'z'.
Engineering? Sus!!

— Arnav Gangwar (@whoarnavg) July 9, 2022

Absolute bollocks. Scary how people just believe things straight off the bat

— . (@MidnightC00per) July 4, 2022

Radius is "r" not "z" nice try.

— The State Of Crypto (@TheStateOfCryp1) July 5, 2022

Watch the video posted by 'MindYourDecisions' on YouTube:

Brief History of Pizza 

The pizza that we know apparently started off as a flatbread of sorts popular in the poor sections of Naples in Italy. 

While there is no exact date for the creation of pizza in recorded history, historians have been able to give a window when it was likely to have originated — with the help of the timeline of the origin of tomatoes, the main ingredient in all kinds of pizzas. 

An article in Reader’s Digest points out that though tomatoes had originated in the West they did not reach Europe until around the 1500s, so it was unlikely that pizza had come into existence before that.

A 1799 book mentioned pizza as being a dough with tomato sauce and cheese, which makes it clear that it had been invented by at least then, the RD article says, adding that an Italian census in the late 1700s listed some people as “pizolas” or pizza makers in Naples, which shows the dish was known by then to give rise to a specific profession.