Math in… Sliced Bread

A cross-section is the shape you get by cutting straight through a solid object.

When we slice a bread loaf apart vertically, the pale inner part that shows up is a cross-section. If we have a bunch of slices from the same loaf, we can probably guess what the original loaf looks like.

Mathematicians use the same idea— they often try to understand a complicated shape in geometry by studying its cross-sections. These are usually simpler than studying the whole shape, and give valuable information.