Let's imagine a piece of carrot that has a shape of a cylinder, and the total surface area of the carrot is S.
If we cut the carrot in half, with a cut parallel to the cylinder base, we will have two smaller cylinders, but the total surface area will increase, since the "internal" part of the bigger cylinder will now be an external area for the new 2 pieces:
In the drawing, the green circles in the right image will add to the total surface area.
If only the base of the cylinder is touching the pan, the surface area will double (from pi*r² to 2*pi*r²), since we will have two pieces of carrot instead of one, with the same base area.
If a bigger surface area is in contact with the pan, the carrots will cook faster. Therefore the answer is YES.
