Easter Egg foil won't re-cover half-eaten egg...?

[Compash]

Gather ye mathematicians, philosophers and scientistssss!

Scenario: I unwrap the foil from my Easter egg, eat half the egg... but when I try to re-cover the uneaten half with the foil - it doesn't fit!

Foil fail!

Foiled again!

I know I'm covering the same area because I'm covering the inside of the same egg - surely it should be exactly the same size, or even slightly smaller due to it being inside? Is it my technique? Or do the gods toy with me?

I suppose I'll just have to eat the second half of the egg... unless you👇know the answer to this conundrum...?

Solution is to eat the entire egg. Obviously.

I've never been in this position myself!

Eat it 😁

Is this your first Easter egg ?

Yes bit like the mythical ‘leftover wine’.
Anyway OP, how thick is the half of egg? Is that thickness maybe taking up a bit of the surface of the foil that wasn’t originally being covered?

I've experienced this exact same mystery myself, every Easter, for approximately 35 years! At various times I've attempted to look into the mathematics and scientific experiments. Now, I've come to the conclusion that it's just Easter magic.
You think you are covering the same surface area concave but the Easter magic has somehow expanded the surface area.
Don't try to work it out any more, just accept it as a quirk of existence.

I noticed exactly the same problem this weekend and was equally baffled.

Are you trying to fold the paper back down inside the egg? So like wrapping it up?

If so, surely you would not have enough. Because if a whole eggs is wrapped with just enough foil to cover surface area ("S") then if you want to wrap the foil over the inside surface area then you'd need:

½S + surface area of Rim (R) + surface area of inside of egg. (I)

I think I + R < ½S. So you wouldn't get to S.

ALSO the act of unwrapping and rewrapping introduces folds/creases into the foil, this reducing the foils area... So you're wrapping the same/more surface area of egg with less surface area of foil than you started....

Or folding it over the top and leaving a void underneath? That's different.

I don’t know the answer to this but am still more perplexed by how anyone can put an Easter egg down half eaten.

I can put down an Easter egg half eaten because of the three entire eggs I ate before it.

I imagine that when the eggs are wrapped in foil the thin foil sheet is held under as high a tension as the material can take without breaking and this stretches it out so that they can use less foil and so save money. When you take it off it is not under tension so is unstretched and smaller than it was on the egg-wrapping production line.

Seriously, I have been waiting my whole life for someone to call for a mathematician.

if you have a perfect half-way straight line then you’d need only a tiny bit of foil to account for the thickness of the egg.

So I suggest this is what’s going wrong:

1. you haven’t nibbled a perfectly straight line so the foil cannot fold over neatly at the mid-section. Even 5mm here will cost you a lot of wrapping
2. the chocolate is so thick that it takes up perhaps 3-5mm of foil away from wrapping, leaving you with a hole at the bottom
3. wrapping concave stuff (inny shapes) is harder than wrapping convex stuff (outy shapes). This is human failing rather than maths.
4. The egg is wrapped by a machine in a factory, using a perfectly flat piece of foil. You are attempting this with a slightly crumpled piece of foil, which reduces the coverage.

Hope that was worth a first from Oxford.

😁 By no means. Like @HoHoHoliday , I have observed the phenomenon since childhood, probably... I just never questioned it. Now I cannot unseen it.

So I'm getting answers in terms of mathematics and magic, and frankly the magic is easier to understand... Yes @WittiestUsernameEver , I'm trying to tuck the foil inside. It sounds like it's the rim that's adding to the surface area then? Small though it is?

I might try an experimental rim nibble tomorrow... just in the spirit of scientific inquiry, you understand... 🤔

This. 👆

Ha! One mystery solved at least.

I wondered what they taught you there! 👩‍🎓It's not a particularly thick chocolate, so I'm surmising it's a mix of reasons 1, 3 and 4...

Or pixies done it.

I imagine that when the eggs are wrapped in foil the thin foil sheet is held under as high a tension as the material can take without breaking and this stretches it out so that they can use less foil and so save money. When you take it off it is not under tension so is unstretched and smaller than it was on the egg-wrapping production line.

Rim is adding teeny amounts to surface area of egg.... plus folds/creases from unwrapping and trying to fold into the convex shape.... all decreasing surface area of foil... On the (marginally) larger surface area of chocolate...

It's never gonna happen!

Smaller piece of foile trying to wrap same/larger area of chocolate.

Try making your foil flat again... might work??

I shouldn't care so much about this, but I am going to try again tomorrow...

My half and then half of the half of my Easter egg wrapped back up perfectly. Although I did very carefully unwrap it, as not to tear any of the foil.

It's the same maths that doesn't work when I tidy a cupboard
Everything fits in with door closed.
I throw away 2 bin bags full of rubbish and take 4 more to the charity shop.
The rest do not fit back into the cupboard however I try. It's astounding.

Lay the foil down flat.
Place your half-egg on foil, edge side down, diagonally across foil.
Draw foil up around egg, a corner at a time, carefully smoothing as you go for maximum coverage.
Job done.

Have you tried turning the foil 90 degrees?

An eggacting eggsperiment sounds eggciting and eggactly what you need to do here

<I'll get my coat!>

Break it in small pieces, stack together then wrap!

Imagine if you just took one bite out of the top, and then tried to cover the remaining outside and inside of the egg with the foil that previously only covered the outside - you’re trying to cover nearly twice as much area. So if you’re folding the foil down into the egg then that’s the issue - less volume of chocolate to cover, but a much bigger surface area!

As you unwrap the eggs they can activate and start to grow. Within a couple of hours the egg may be bigger, hence the foil will not fit.

In order to prove this, unwrap an egg and measure it. Then place it on a worktop or table. Then stare at it intently for 2 hours (this is important).

After 2 hours measure the egg again and record your results.