Yahoo News Parallelogram, hexagon or pentagon? The safest way for six people to picnic revealed
Groups should picnic in a parallelogram, hexagon or pentagon and if they want to meet together while still maintaining social distancing and good hygiene, experts have said.
On Monday, lockdown restriction will ease so that six people can gather together for the first time since measures were imposed on March 23rd.
Experts said that it was safer to have a picnic rather than a barbecue, despite what Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister said at Thursday’s press briefing.
Professor Sally Bloomfield, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “If you really want to have a social gathering and a meal, and the more time we spend outdoors the better, then it should be a picnic where we each bring our own food and knives and forks and plates and everything and keep them to ourselves and take them away with us.
“Then we can have a really nice social gathering. But barbecues, please no, at the moment.”
Maths specialist Bobby Seagull who presents the BBC Two series, Monkman & Seagull's Genius Adventures, has suggested that the most efficient way to keep people the correct distance apart is to form a series of triangles, with each person sitting at an apex. When six people do this it forms a parallelogram.
Mr Seagull said: “My solution is not perfect but means anyone could leave without upsetting others' social distancing. we think that this problem is trickier than at first sight.”
However mathematicians at Oxford University believe that sitting in a hexagon or pentagon would be a more efficient solution, taking up less space and allowing minimum distance between people.
Jason Lotay, Professor of Pure Mathematics at Oxford University said that putting six people in a hexagon, each two metres apart, would require just 10.39 square metres.
Forming a hexagon means the maximum distance between two people is four metres at the extremities, while the average distance that one person has to another person is around 2.29m.
Alternatively, if one person is placed in the middle so that the other five form a petagram then the maximum distance between any two people is just 3.80m.
However, although the pentagram requires a smaller area - 9.51 square metres - the average distance that one person has between another person rises to 2.72m.
“Of course, things are much better for the person in the middle, who is 2m from everyone, but worse for everyone else, who now have an average of 2.86m to anyone else,” added Prof Lotay.
“I would probably say that efficiency is given by the total area required and minimising the maximum distance between any two people, in which case the pentagram model is better.
“However, as I say, it means that one person gets preferential treatment, and it is worse for everyone else.”
For people who insist on hosting a barbecue next week, the university of Reading has said they should consider one-way systems of travel around the grill and bringing their own condiments.
Professor Patricia Riddell, recommended asking guests to bring their own cutlery, plates and condiments to reduce the risk of virus transmission through touching the same surfaces, and having only one person using the tongs.
She also advised setting out seats in advance for people to sit two metres apart, and sitting alongside each other rather than face to face.
“You could have routes of travel so people go round one way to the barbecue,” she said.
“I think you could make it quite good fun, almost like an obstacle course or game.”
