Pi Day » Random Stuff

A couple weird things about Pi

admin — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 04:12:38 +0000

If you hold up a mirror to a circle, it looks like a circle. If you hold up a mirror to Pi, it spells Pie. This clever T-Shirt will demonstrate:

‘3.14’ backwards looks like ‘PIE’!

For all you 1337 h4x0rz out there (what’s that mean?) who love Pi, this tweet is for you:

3.14159 x 1337% = 42.00

Pi Links 2010

Dan — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:30:20 +0000

In The News:

Also, follow the Pi Day buzz on Google Trends for Pi Day & Pi.

Finally, check out these Pi Earrings from ‘NerdGoddess’ on Etsy, as well as other the other handmade Pi crafts.

How I learned to enjoy Pi

Kevin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:09:14 +0000

I first became aware of Pi in 2nd or 3rd grade, when there was a banner on our classroom wall showing the first 20 or 30 digits. It said something like “Pi ≈ 3.1415…”. I ask the teacher (though I don’t remember her name, now) what “Pi” was, and was told that it had to do with circles, and that we’d be learning about it later in the year.

When the “Circles Unit” came, we did most of the computation by hand (this was early elementary school) and approximated Pi as 3.14 (or 22/7, if we were “doing fractions”). We learned about the area formula: Pi*r^2 and the circumference formula: Pi*d. Somewhere along the line, I started memorizing the numbers off that banner. To this day, I’ve really never memorized any more than that, though I’ve tried on numerous occasions.

Later on, in Geometry (I think 7th or 8th grade), we started graphing Pi-related things on TI-92s, thus kindling my interest in TI Calculators. We learned formulas for the surface area (4pi*r^2) and volume (4/3*pi*r^3) of a sphere and probably some others. It was about this time that Dan and I started observing Pi Day and registered this domain name.

– Kevin

Another song about Pi Day

Dan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:45:51 +0000

Zeke Hoskin is a songwriter and retired computer programmer from Bellingham, WA. On March 14, 2008, two of Flip Breskin’s guitar students brought her a pie and explained why. Zeke wrote a song about it, download & listen to the MP3 here.

Puzzle & Calendar

Dan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:30:56 +0000

The Pi Day Challenge is a series of puzzles that are logic based. A team of logicians adapted or created these puzzles – some require research, some require mathematics, some require pure savvy.

TheoremOfTheDay.org’s 2010 Calendar is “12 Theorems by Women Mathematicians”. They also had a special theorem prepared for Pi Day 2009: Download the 2009 PDF.

Pi Embroidery Design

Dan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:08 +0000

Urban Threads has released a mathematically marvelous embroidery design to celebrate! “Pi Equals Delicious” will be yummy on creations for math teachers and number-crunching mad scientists of all stripes to celebrate this most circular of holidays. Check it out.

2015: A Pi Day with more Accuracy

Dan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:51:27 +0000

There’s a popular Facebook event to help you remember that on Pi Day 2015 at 9:26am there are even more accurate decimal place digits than usual: 3.1415926! Until then, try to enjoy 3.1410, 11, 12, 13, & 14 even though they’re not exactly right.

Π-Water?

Kevin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:30:55 +0000

Korean company WONYONG markets a product called Π-Water. The site is in English, though some of the translations are a bit rough. From what I can tell, “Π-Water” (which also may be known as “Tarama Water”) seems to be some sort of drinking water, designed to mimic the water found inside the cells of living organisms. They suggest that it can also be used in food preparation, agriculture, and even in swimming pools.

I’m not entirely sure what this product has to do with Pi, thought the bottles are round. I’ve never seen this product on the shelf in the US or southern Europe (or anywhere else, for that matter), nor have I seen it sold online anywhere.

There are probably many products that use the letter π in their name, like π perfume.

Are “you” in Pi?

Kevin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:30:05 +0000

Over at Facade.com, they’ve got a neat little utility for searching the digits of Pi, if you’re not inclined to search them manually. Their idea is that you can “find yourself in Pi” by searching for your birthday, thought the utility can find any string of numbers you choose. According to the search engine’s page, it searches the first 1254543 digits of Pi, looking for the number you provide.

Knit a Pi Beret

Dan — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:00:47 +0000

Celebrate Pi Day in style by wearing a beret with the first ten digits of pi encoded in bands of reverse stockinette stitch.

See Abigail’s free pi knit hat pattern on her blog. Happy knitting!