Bare silicon wafers have little notches cutting a small portion off the side of the wafer to indicate the crystallographic direction, and doping type (N-type or P-type). See link below.

I regularly eat bagels for breakfast. In my mid-morning stupor I often have a difficult time spreading cream cheese on my bagel, then reassembling it again with the correct rotational orientation.

I propose the system of flats to be baked or sliced into bagels in order to convey vital information about the bagel, such as the flavor and bread type. This will also greatly aid in re-assembling the bagels' two halves back into their correct orientation. This will help the sleep deprived and visually impaired to distinguish between their bagels, and not ruin their morning.
-- swimr, Aug 01 2008

Wafer Flats http://en.wikipedia...orientation_notches
How Wafer Flats Work [swimr, Aug 01 2008]

Cream Cheese Rings Cream_20Cheese_20Rings
The classic by [bristolz] [csea, Aug 02 2008]

The use of flats to ensure correct reassembly of a toroid, assuming that the toroid has been correctly bisected perpendicular to the axis of orbit, produces a .5 rate of critical error and a .5 rate of overall error. Since the error rate on randomly assembled units is currently .5 critical .75 error overall we can see that this mechanism only reduces the chance of non-critical (spread on the inside) errors . The inclusion of flats or notches exponentially increases the rate of partial failure due to orientation misalignment (exposed spread) an error eliminated by the use of the current shape.
-- WcW, Aug 02 2008


//I often have a difficult time spreading cream cheese on my bagel//

See [link] for relevant technology.
-- csea, Aug 02 2008


WcW I may be a bit off, but I do believe we may mean different things. A correctly bisected toroid perpendicular to its axis of orbit as you put it, or in layman's terms a bagel shaped object sliced in half can be randomly assembled.

The usage of bagel flats is to convey (through touch) the bagel type, and remedy any rotational alignment errors. The major and minor flat (see link) should in any case of a randomly assembled bagel reduce critical and overall error to 0.5. A number easily combated by the fact that I can distinguish in my sleep the difference between the inside and outside of a bagel.
-- swimr, Aug 04 2008


If you can get the pieces facing the right way then what purpose does the flat serve?
-- WcW, Aug 04 2008


[WcW], I think we are observing a person who is awakened by their OCD kicking in each morning, much as some of us get wake up calls from a full bladder. If you don't experience the problem, then the solution may appear to be a bit pointless, I think.

[swimr], in the interim, while waiting for the development of a coding system, you might try just nibbling off a chunk of bagel before vivisecting it. Gives your taste buds a chance to vote on the appropriate condiment, and allows you to re-align the fang tracks after you've coated it with your chosen morning adhesive.
-- lurch, Aug 04 2008


One solution would be to make the bages intentially ovoid in profile rather than a perfect torus. The asymmetry would ensure correct alignment.

Conventional toroidal bagels could be modofied prior to bisection by the incision (possibly with sharp scissors) of two slots spaced 120 degrees apart around the circumperence, or the application of a line of food colouring, prior to bisection. This would allow the upper and lower hemitoroids to be precisely aligned prior to reassembly, given that the lower slots are not obscured by the filling.

This idea is good within its limits, but does not address the equally vexed problem of filling overlap and dental-pressure induced asymmetric cream cheese excursion. [+]
-- 8th of 7, Aug 04 2008



random, halfbakery