{"id":6078,"date":"2017-03-14T14:59:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T14:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/?p=5332"},"modified":"2017-03-14T14:59:52","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T14:59:52","slug":"its-pi-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/combo\/2017\/03\/14\/its-pi-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Pi Day!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286….<\/strong><\/p>\n

March 14th<\/sup> is Pi Day!!!<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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Beginning geometry students might remember finding the area of a circle – pi x radius squared…. But, what is<\/em> Pi (\u03c0) and why does it rate its very own day?<\/p>\n

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Pi is one of the most famous and mysterious of numbers. Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it\u2019s diameter, Pi seems<\/em> simple. However, it is an irrational number. An irrational number cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction and the decimal representation therefore never ends, nor does it ever settle into a permanent repeating pattern.\u00a0Scientists have calculated billions of digits of Pi, starting with\u00a03.14159265358979323\u2026. with\u00a0no end in sight. It could be calculated to infinity and there would be absolutely no way to know which number would come next.<\/p>\n

Pi is not only irrational, it is also transcendental! A transcendental number is a number that is not a root of any algebraic equation having integral coefficients, as\u00a0\u03c0 \u00a0or\u00a0e. All transcendental numbers are irrational, but not all irrational numbers are transcendental.<\/p>\n

Pi is used all around us every day – Christian Constanda<\/a>, the University of Tulsa’s C.S. Oliphant professor of mathematical sciences, says, “Look at a football: when you compute the volume, then Pi gets involved in the formula.” Constanda also said, “If you drive through a puddle, creating a wave with the car, that involves Pi. If you see a tornado, that definitely involves Pi.”<\/p>\n

Martin Krzywinski<\/a>, a bioinformatics scientist, began publishing his pi art in 2013. \u00a0He also explains, “…Any word that you can think of, when encoded in numbers, would show up in pi, says Kryzwinski. So would the entire works of Shakespeare, all possible misprints and permutations of Shakespeare, and even, if you were patient enough, pi itself…”<\/p>\n

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Photos from\u00a0Maths has never looked so appealing!\u00a0<\/em>dailymail.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Want to see what 100,00 digits of Pi look like? Go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some Pi Day Fun Facts:<\/p>\n