March 14 = 3/14 = 3.14 = Pi Day!
New Vistas proudly recognizes and celebrates the 31th anniversary of Pi Day today!
Across the country today, students of math, teachers, and mathematicians will be celebrating Pi with contests: competitions to recite the most digits of Pi, pie eating contests, listing known equations including Pi, and more!
Why is Pi so fascinating to mathematicians and scientists? Pi appears as though it is random and without sequence going on with infinity… However, in the words of Steven Strogatz, professor of mathematics at Cornell, “The digits of Pi can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi!”
What is Pi ( π )? Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference (the distance around the circle, represented by the letter C) to its diameter (the distance across the circle at its widest point, represented by the letter d). That ratio, which is about 3.14, also appears in the formula for the area inside the circle, A = πr2, where π is the Greek letter “pi” and r is the circle’s radius (the distance from center to rim). With modern computers, Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond the decimal.
We’ve used computers to calculate pi to more than 22 trillion digits.
In 2016, a Swiss scientist, Peter Trueb, used a computer with 24 hard drives and a program called y-cruncher to calculate pi to more than 22 trillion digits — the current world record for the enumeration of pi. If you read one digit every second, it would take you just under 700,000 years to recite all those digits.
Even rocket scientists only need a bit more than a dozen decimal places.
Though we know trillions of digits of pi, we don’t really need them. Even the engineers at NASA round pi off to 15 decimal places when calculating interplanetary trajectories. In fact, if you were trying to calculate the size of the observable universe, using 39 digits of pi would give you an answer off by no more than the width of a hydrogen atom.
Pi is part of nature’s equation: such as in the cycle of nature, rotation of planets, solar systems, and galaxies. It also posits relationships to repeat patterns such as rhythms and cyclical heart beats! This further indicates that Pi is mathematical component of everything around us and essential to past and future mathematics and engineering.
To learn more about all things Pi, take a look at http://www.piday.org/
Reference: Retrieved March 11
