We love and celebrate Pi Day here at the Engineering Library on or around the traditional day of March 14th (3/14), but did you know that there another Pi Day? Pi can be expressed with the fraction 22/7, so if you’re partial to pastry, you can celebrate Pi Day on July 22nd. You can also call it pi approximation day, if you want to be more formal.
Here’s some fun Pi facts to get you started with your celebrations:
If you don’t want to use the word “pi” or are looking for alternatives, you can use “Archimedes’ constant,” “the circular constant” or “Ludolph’s number.”
Mathematician William Jones first proposed using the Greek letter as shorthand for the constant in 1706. Before its adoption, pi was referred to by a Latin phrase which roughly translates to “the quantity which, when the diameter is multiplied by it, yields the circumference.”
The world record for memorization of decimals of pi is 70,000 and is held by Rajveer Meena. Meena established this record in 2015 and wore a blindfold for the 10 hours it took him to complete this feat. If you want to try your hand at beating the record, you can use techniques like memorizing smaller groups or spatial visualization techniques.
You don’t need 70,000 digits of pi to make accurate calculations. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses the first 15 digits after the decimal (3.141592653589793) for interplanetary navigation calculations.
The first known algorithm for calculating pi used polygons. Archimedes calculated pi by calculating the perimeters of inscribed and circumscribed polygons. He doubled the number of sides of the polygons, finally reaching a 96-sided polygon and found that pi was between 223/71 and 22/7 (does that number look familiar to you?).
In 1818 the Laufmaschine (“running machine” or draisine was invented by Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun. He was inspired to create this contraption because of a shortage of horses. The Laufmaschine was designed with no pedals, propelled solely by the running rider. It also had no turning or braking mechanisms, meaning that it was not very safe or useful, but they were popular. The Laufmaschine was the first widely-available mode of transportation that did not require an animal, meaning that the average person could enjoy it and not just the wealthy.
A man on a Laufmaschine
Building off this popularity, inventors across Europe started to improve von Drais’ design. Steering mechanisms were added, and pedals were attached to the front wheel. These were not very comfortable, and because of the rough ride were commonly called “boneshakers.” Bicycles as we would recognize them today were invented in 1860 by Ernest Michaux and Pierre Lallement, and were known as velocipedes. It would take several innovations before they would be the most popular ride on the road. Perhaps the most famous (and amusing) innovation was the addition of a large front wheel. Bikes in this style became known as penny-farthings, and were extremely popular in the 1870’s and 80’s. Eugene Meyer is generally credited as the inventor of the penny-farthing, although there is some dispute amongst enthusiasts. Meyer patented the wire-spoke tension wheel in 1869. This style of wheel is still used on motorcycles today, and was a huge improvement over the wooden wheels used previously. The large front wheel was added for stability, and bicycle racing clubs popped up all over the world. There was one major danger with penny-farthings and their large front wheels: headers. A header is when the rider of the bicycle would fall over the front of the bicycle, falling head first from a height.
A man riding a penny-farthing bicycle
The safety bicycle was invented in 1885 by John Kemp Starley. Starley, who called his invention the “Rover,” never patented his invention, although it had several improvements in safety and ease of use. The Rover had equally sized wheels, a wide range for steering, and a rear-wheel chain drive. In 1888 John Dunlop repopularized the pneumatic bicycle tire. These two combined meant that riding a bicycle was smoother and safer than ever. Since then, bikes have stayed much the same, but improved with better materials and designs for frames, brakes and gear systems.
The Rover Safety Bicycle
Looking for some reading to celebrate World Bicycle Day? Here are my recommendations:
Photo of the manure wagon in the practice courtroom of the Law Center – Photo from the Collections of the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City. The Iowa City Press-Citizen Collection.
April Fools Day is a day for pranks and tricks, both of which are College of Engineering traditions. These pranks were almost all aimed at the Law Students (often called “Laws”), with whom the Engineering Students had a long-running rivalry. The pranks usually took place during MECCA Week (the week of St. Patrick’s Day). Here are some details on some of the most famous pranks.
As the story goes, the the Engineering Students found an old manure wagon and thought it would be a very funny joke for it to appear on the top floor of the Law Building. They took it apart and took the pieces to the law building where they reassembled it. They then thought that a wagon was useless without a horse, so they found a horse and brought it up to join the wagon! When the Law Students arrived in the morning, they were able to take the wagon apart, but those who have spent any time on a farm would know that the horse would be the bigger of the two problems. While horses will willingly be led up stairs, they are unable to walk down stairs. As the story goes, the horse was lifted out the window with a crane. Perhaps the most famous of these pranks, the horse and wagon has become a legend. Because of this, it has several different versions, but we can confirm that at one point there was a wagon in the building, thanks to this image from an Iowa City Press Citizen Photographer.
An article from the Daily Iowan covering the mouse prank, March 16, 1962
The same night that the wagon appeared in the Law Center, the Engineering Students left behind some additional guests for the Law Students to welcome – a group of about 50 white mice that were dyed green. According Jim Huff (BS 1962, MS 1964, electrical engineering), “I was the one who dyed the white mice green so they could be let loose in the law building. I still have the old leather gloves with green fingers that I wore to let them swim around in a wastebasket filled with water and green Rit dye.” The Law Students were able to catch most of them and deposit them outside. Frustrated about what he thought was an excessive number f pranks, Mason Ladd, Dean of the College of Law, confronted Arthur Melloh, the Dean of the College of Engineering about his students’ behavior. Melloh responded “I don’t know anything about it. For all I know, some green mice put a manure wagon in your Courtroom!”
MECCA Week pranks were not always supported by the Engineering Faculty. One year, the campus woke up to a green dome on the Old Capitol! The Dean of the College of Engineering, thinking it had been painted, expelled the students responsible. Later that day, the wind picked up and blew off the green fabric that had been draped over the dome. The students were reinstated and there are rumors that one of them later became faculty himself.
The Law Students did not take all these pranks lying down. They retaliated in several ways, including stealing the Blarney Stone, the MECCA Queen Trophy, and even the MECCA Queen herself on a couple of occasions! One memorable year, the Law Students presented the Engineers with their candidates for MECCA Queen: two 150-pound hogs. With the decline of MECCA, pranks have also declined. We do not recommend pulling any pranks here on campus, but hope you enjoy the joyful spirit of April Fools Day!
Snow will soon be here and it’s time for wintertime traditions – which includes gingerbread creations! National Gingerbread House Day is December 12th. Early history of the recipe is hazy, and may range to as far back as Ancient Greece in 2400 BCE to France in 992 AD. Early on, gingerbread was used in religious ceremonies or as a digestive aid. Gingerbread cookies as we now usually enjoy them, in fun shapes with decorations is usually credited to Queen Elizabeth I, who asked for cookies to be made in the shapes of visiting dignitaries. Gingerbread was incredibly popular across medieval Europe, and there were even Gingerbread Fairs to attend where you could enjoy gingerbread shaped according to the season – flowers for springtime, and birds in the fall. Because of tall of the spices required in the recipe, gingerbread was considered very high class, and those rich enough to have it in their own homes would sometimes decorate it with gold leaf.
The Germans began building gingerbread houses in the 16th century, and the practice became more widespread after the Grimm Brothers popularized Hansel and Gretel in 1812. Since then, gingerbread projects have turned into feats of engineering. The current world record holder for the largest gingerbread house was created by the Traditions Golf Club in Bryan Texas. This house covered 2,500 square feet, required 1,800 pounds of butter, and 1,080 ounces of ginger. It was so large that it required a building permit! If you don’t have the space to try your hand at breaking this record, maybe you can try breaking Jon Lovitch’s record for the largest gingerbread village. Lovitch’s latest record-holding village (he has held the world record 4 times) contained 1,251 structures. If you try to break a record, be careful! The rules are very specific. One recent attempt was disqualified because it contained non-edible components.
Want to make your own gingerbread house to celebrate National Gingerbread House Day? Here are some tips:
Use a European recipe for your cookies. American gingerbread recipes tend to be softer, which is great for cookies, but not very helpful structurally. You can learn more about the chemistry of baking in Cooking For Geeks, which can be found in our collection. Check it out here!
Use a thick royal icing as your mortar. Finding the right consistency can be difficult, as it needs to be runny enough to easily spread, but thick enough to stay put.
Don’t be afraid to use support! While using an internal support will disqualify you from earning any world records, but you can use a can of beans to help prop up your walls while the icing dries can ensure that the icing is able to dry in the correct position and free up your hands to move onto the next part of your project.
Plan ahead! Use your engineering skills to set yourself up for success.
Get Creative. You don’t have to make a candy-covered cottage. Search online for fun ideas. Add lights, or try a different shape. See below for some examples:
Elevate things with a gingerbread treehouse
Recreate your favorite famous buildings in cookie form
A geodesic home would be a fun and challenging build
No need for your house to stay in one place. A gingerbread camper is a great idea!
Personally, I want to see Kinnick Stadium made out of Gingerbread. Are you up to the challenge? If you build a gingerbread creation, show us! You can send it to us on any of our social media channels @uienglib on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
Sources:
10+ Gingerbread House Tips for This Holiday Season 2021. (2021, September 19). Best Gingerbread Houses. https://bestgingerbreadhouses.com/gingerbread-house-tips/
Avey, T. (2014, May 28). History of Gingerbread | The History Kitchen. PBS Food. https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-gingerbread/
Guinness World Records. (2017, January 6). Largest gingerbread village. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-gingerbread-village
McCandless, M. (2016, December 14). Gingerbread Houses – A Delicious History | Facts From the Stacks. Bellevue University Facts From the Stacks. https://blogs.bellevue.edu/library/index.php/2016/12/gingerbread-houses-a-delicious-history/
Wilson, A. (2018, December 22). A brief history of the gingerbread house. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/dec/22/a-brief-history-of-the-gingerbread-house
Happy National Waffle Day! Make sure to celebrate by enjoying a waffle or two. Waffles may seem like they are not connected in any way to engineering, but engineering is the science of applied anything.
We celebrate on August 24th because it was on this day in 1869 that Cornelius Swarthout received the first U.S. patent for a waffle iron. Swarthout however did not invent the waffle – waffles had been a staple of European cuisine since the 14th century, with the first known recipe being recorded in Le Ménagier de Paris by an anonymous author.
If all of this has made you hungry, don’t despair. Come on in and check out Cooking for Geeks: real science, great hacks, and good food by Jeff Potter and try out a recipe for yeast waffles. As with all baking, making waffles includes chemistry, so just call your kitchen a lab. Real applicable experience! If a Belgian waffle is not your style or you don’t have a waffle iron on hand, you can enjoy some other kinds of waffles – maybe a waffle cone, or even waffle fries (you don’t need a waffle iron for those).
If you want to get a little more structural, that’s an option too. Modern waffle iron inventors have improved the design since Swarthout’s day, and now your sweet squares can come in just about any shape. You can make a waffle that is definitely not a moon, or build your own waffle tower made of waffle bricks.
Have you celebrated Waffle Day before? What are your favorite toppings? Let us know below!
Newell, T. (2016, March 25). 12 Waffle Facts You’d Be Hard-Pressed To Find Anywhere Else. FoodBeast. https://www.foodbeast.com/.
Seidman, R. (2010, August 24). Waffle Iron Patented – Smithsonian Libraries / Unbound. Smithsonian Libraries. https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/.
Swarthout, C. (1869). Waffle Iron (94043). U.S. Patent Office.
I bet you don’t think much about the pencil when you think about picking it up and getting to work. Probably when it needs to be sharpened or when the mechanical pencil needs more lead, but most of us don’t think of the pencil often. It just is there. It just “is.”
The pencil, as we know it, has a fascinating history, dating back to the early 16th century! So why would March 30th be National Pencil Day? March 30, 1858 was the date when Hymen Lipman received the first patent for attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil!
Back in the 16th century a storm in Cumberland uprooted a large tree exposing a black, gooey substance in Borrowdale near Kewsick. The substance was actually graphite and the nearby farmers used it to mark their sheep. That soon developed into sticks of graphite being wrapped in string so the fingers wouldn’t get so dirty. That developed into a casing that would hold the graphite – a predecessor to what we know of as the mechanical pencil. Sometime in the 16th century the pencil, much as we know it, was born. Graphite wasn’t exported so that area became the world-wide center of pencil manufacturing. The graphite in that area was the only known source of high-quality graphite so it was highly guarded and sold for large sums at auctions.
I won’t go into long detail, but when France declared war on Great Britain in 1793, they needed to come up with an alternative to the pencils made in Great Britain. So Nicolas-Jacques Conté was tasked with developing a pencil which did not require imported materials. He came up with mixing graphite powder with clay to produce fine rods which were fired in a kiln. It was patented by Conté in 1795 and is still the process by which pencils are made today.
After many iterations the Dixon Ticonderoga Company claimed to make “the world’s best pencil.” The Ticonderoga #2 pencil is the familiar yellow pencil with the yellow and green ferrule (the metal sleeve holding the eraser in place). Chances you have one on your desk.
Little known fact: “[…] the pencil does have a dark side – George Lucas apparently used a Dixon Ticonderoga when he working on the first draft of the screenplay for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and so the pencil is, at least in part, responsible for Jar Jar Binks.” At least that is what James Ward, author of The Perfection of the Paper Clip: Curious Tales of Invention, Accidental Genius, and Stationery Obsession, claims on page 96.
Stationery Fever: From Paper Clips to Pencils and Everything in Betweenauthor John Z. Komurki claims the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 is the “[…most gorgeous pencil the world has every seen […]”. It is a hexagonal pencil made with the unique mixture of wax, graphite and clay used in the lead. Because of that special mixture it claimed ‘half the pressure, twice the speed.’ The Blackwing was reportedly used by John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Chuck Jones, Stephen Sondheim, and Eugene O’Neill, to name a few!
The history of pencils is fascinating and includes a book, How to Sharpen Pencils.Stationery Fever has a chapter devoted to pencil sharpening!
Here are interesting facts about “notable pencil users” from the National Day Calendar.
Thomas Edison had pencils specially made by Eagle Pencil. His pencils were three inches long, thicker than standard pencils, and had softer graphite than typically available.
Vladimir Nabokov rewrote everything he ever published, usually several times, by pencil.
John Steinbeck was an obsessive pencil user and is said to have used as many as 60 a day. His novel East of Eden took more than 300 pencils to write.
Vincent van Gogh used only Faber pencils as they were “superior to Carpenters pencils, a capital black and most agreeable.”
Johnny Carson regularly played with pencils at his Tonight Show desk. These pencils were specially made with erasers at both ends to avoid on-set accidents.
Roald Dahl used only pencils with yellow casings to write his books. He began each day with six sharpened pencils and only when all six became unusable did he resharpen the
Here are 20 things about pencils that you probably don’t know! (Including are they poisonous? Can they be used as a weapon?)
1. There is no risk of lead poisoning if you stab yourself (or someone else) with a pencil because it contains no lead — just a mixture of clay and graphite. Still, pencil wounds carry a risk of infection for the stabees, lawsuits for stabbers.
2. And bad juju for anyone linked to Watergate: In his autobiography, G. Gordon Liddy describes finding John Dean (whom he despised for “disloyalty”) alone in a room. Spotting sharpened pencils on a desk, Liddy fleetingly considered driving one into Dean’s throat.
3. Graphite, a crystallized form of carbon, was discovered near Keswick, England, in the mid-16th century. An 18th-century German chemist, A. G. Werner, named it, sensibly enough, from the Greek graphein, “to write.”
4. The word “pencil” derives from the Latin penicillus, meaning — not so sensibly — “little tail.”
5. Pencil marks are made when tiny graphite flecks, often just thousandths of an inch wide, stick to the fibers that make up paper.
6. Got time to kill? The average pencil holds enough graphite to draw a line about 35 miles long or to write roughly 45,000 words. History does not record anyone testing this statistic.
7. The Greek poet Philip of Thessaloníki wrote of leaden writing instruments in the first century B.C., but the modern pencil, as described by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner, dates only to 1565.
8. French pencil boosters include Nicolas-Jacques Conté, who patented a clay-and-graphite manufacturing process in 1795; Bernard Lassimone, who patented the first pencil sharpener in 1828; and Therry des Estwaux, who invented an improved mechanical sharpener in 1847.
9. French researchers also hit on the idea of using caoutchouc, a vegetable gum now known as rubber, to erase pencil marks. Until then, writers removed mistakes with bread crumbs. 10. Most pencils sold in America today have eraser tips, while those sold in Europe usually have none. Are Europeans more confident scribblers?11 Henry David Thoreau — American, but a confident scribbler all the same — used pencils to write Walden. And he probably got them free. His father owned a pencil-making business near Boston, where Henry allegedly designed his own pencils before becoming a semi-recluse.12. In 1861, Eberhard Faber built the first American mass-production pencil factory in New York City.13. Pencils were among the basic equipment issued to Union soldiers during the Civil War.
14. The mechanical pencil was patented in 1822. The company founded by its British developers prospered until 1941, when the factory was bombed, presumably by pencil-hating Nazis.
15. Je suis un crayon rouge. After the 1917 Soviet revolution, American entrepreneur Armand Hammer was awarded a monopoly for pencil manufacturing in the USSR.
16. More than half of all pencils come from China. In 2004, factories there turned out 10 billion pencils, enough to circle the earth more than 40 times.
17. Pencils can write in zero gravity and so were used on early American and Russian space missions — even though NASA engineers worried about the flammability of wood pencils in a pure-oxygen atmosphere, not to mention the menace of floating bits of graphite.
18. Those concerns inspired Paul Fisher to develop the pressurized Fisher Space Pen in 1965. After the Apollo 1 fire, NASA banned pencils in favor of his pen on manned spaceflights.
19. The world’s largest pencil is a Castell 9000, on display at the manufacturer’s plant near Kuala Lumpur. Made of Malaysian wood and polymer, it stands 65 feet high.
20. At the other extreme, engineers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have used an atomic force microscope as a kind of pencil to draw lines 50 nanometers (two millionths of an inch) wide. Just because they could.
I hope you next time you pick up a pencil you’ll think of some of the history behind the development of today’s pencil!
Resources:
Ward, James. 2015. The perfection of the paper clip: curious tales of invention, accidental genius, and stationery obsession. New York : Touchstone Engineering Library TS171 .W37 2015
Komurki, John Z. 2016. Stationery fever : from paper clips to pencils and everything in between. Munich ; New York : Prestel. Engineering Library TS1233 .K66 2016
December 7th, 2019 is National SKYWARN® Recognition Day!!
So, just what is SKYWARN® ?
It is a National Weather Service (NWS) volunteer program with between 350,000 and 400,000 trained severe weather spotters. The main responsibility of a SKYWARN® spotter is to identify and describe severe local weather and storms. Unlike storm chasers, they generally stay in one place until it is necessary for them to move. The spotter is the “eyes and ears in the field” for the NWS.
In 1999, the NWS and the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) created SKYWARN® Recognition Day to recognize and honor “. . . the contributions that SKYWARN® volunteers make to the NWS mission, the protection of life and property. . .” It is held each year on the first Saturday in December.
Think you would be interested in becoming a SKYWARN® volunteer? Training includes learning about basic severe weather structure and development, how to report, and basic severe weather safety. Training is free and typically lasts about 2 hours. Volunteers include police, EMTs, dispatchers, fire fighters, individuals affiliated with hospitals, schools, nursing homes – and concerned private citizens! You can attend training at any NWS office facility, no matter where you live! Check SKYWARN training for information and find the SKYWARN® program in your area! Attend a training course near you, register as a spotter, and help keep your community safe!
Thank you to all the spotters out there who volunteer their time to help the NWS with the updated, real-time weather information!
Resources:
Skywarn Recognition Day : First Saturday in December.National Day Calendar. Date accessed Nov. 20, 2017.
Skywarn Recognition Day : December 2, 2017 from 0000z to 2400z.National Weather Service. Date accessed Nov. 20, 2017.
Mogil, H. Michael. 2007. Extreme weather :understanding the science of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heat waves, snow storms, global warming and other atmospheric disturbances. New York, N.Y. : black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. Engineering Library QC981 .M65 2007
Can you imagine a life without tools? We can’t! And you don’t have to! We have approximately 233 tools in our Tool Library – and are always adding more!
We have all sorts of things! We have laptotps and iPads, chargers and cables, hammers and screwdrivers, 3D scanners and hot glue guns, GoPro cameras and Raspberry Pi – all available to check out! We also have an Occulus Rift for use in the library!
Need a video game screwdriver set? We’ve got that! Wire cutter/stripper? Yup, we’ve got that. Sound level meter? We have that, too! Multimeter? Projector? Heat Gun Kit? Oscilloscope? Yes, yes, yes, and yes! We have those!!
We have 3D scanners, cables and chargers (63!), 5 laptops, 12 iPads, calipers, a 25-foot tape measure, speed gun, wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, socket set . . .
And, we have just added 2 Video Conference Meeting Cameras (Owls) and a vibration meter!
Check our Tool Library to see everything that is available!
When we think of women in aviation, we often think of Amelia Earhart. But have you heard of Harriet Quimby, Lores Bonney, Fay Gillis Wells?
Amelia Earheart took her first plane ride in 1920 and began flying lessons in 1921 – buying her first plane that same year. Harriet Quimby was a newspaper reporter/writer and was assigned to cover an airshow in 1910, and she was hooked. On May 11, 1911 – one day before her 36th birthday, she entered flight school. In 1931 Lores Bonney set a new Australian record for a one-day flight by a woman. In 1933 she was the first woman to fly from Australia to England. In 1928 Fay Gillis jumped from a disabled plane in flight, making her the first woman to join the Caterpillar Club – a group composed of pilots who have made life-saving jumps with silk parachutes. Betty Skelton-Frankman won the International Feminine Aerobatic championship in 1948, 1949, and 1950. She was best known for the trick “inverted ribbon cut,” (she flew upside down, 10 feet off the ground, through a ribbon tied between two poles)!
In 1994 Patrice Clarke-Washington was the only African American woman flying with the rank of captain for a major airline. Jean Ross Howard-Phelan is the 13th woman in the world to receive a helicopter’s pilot license. She learned to fly in 1954. Florence Parlett actively flew until she was 83 years old and has operated the Annapolis Flying Service at Lee Airport in Edgewater, Maryland.
In 1993 at age 11, Victoria Van Meter flew across the ocean and then did it again the following year. A flight instructor was required to be with her on both flights because she didn’t meet the age limit to fly alone.
These women, and so many others, laid the groundwork for women to pursue their love of flying in a variety of aviation careers.
Lori Love: crop duster in California.
Madge Minton: joined the WASPs (World War II Women Airforce Service Pilots) and flew fighter planes across the country to various military bases.
Susan Still: 3rd woman trained in combat aircraft for attack missions.
Suzanne Asbury-Oliver: skywriter for Pepsi in 1980.
Evie Washington: flight instructor for the Civil Air Patrol.
Mary Edna Fraser: uses aerial photography to inspire her silk batik artwork. She doesn’t have a pilot’s license, but will take off, land, and maneuver the aircraft into position.
Ellen Paneok: Native American Eskimo pilot – delivering supplies and mail to remote Alaskan villages.
Mayte Greco: Cuban American pilot and founding member of Brothers to the Rescue (Hermanos al Rescate), an organization of pilots who fly search and rescue operations over the ocean between Florid and Cuba searching for Cuban exiles in rafts.
They also paved the way for the participation of women in NASA and space exploration. In the beginning they were “human computers,” then aeronautical engineers, and then astronauts.
Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith and Barbara Holley: African American women mathematicians, worked at NASA during the Civil Rights era. “Human computers.”
Shannon Lucid: one of the original core of women astronauts; in 1997 she held the record for the longest time in space for an American (188 days on board the Russian space station Mir).
Mary Ellen Weber: mission specialist on board space shuttle Discovery in June of 1995.
Vickie Gutierrez: Aerospace Engineering. Began working for NASA in 2002.
Rosalind Cylar: Attorney and advisor in the Office of chief counsel at NASA’s Marshall space Flight Center.
Courtney Ritz: Is blind and works at the Goddard Space Flight Center since 2002. She is the Web Accessibility Coordinator.
In September 2017, astronaut Peggy Whiton broke NASA’s record for the longest time spent in space – 665 days! She also holds other records – the record for the oldest woman to go to space (57 years old); women’s record for the longest amount of time doing spacewalks – 53 hours & 22 minutes; and the first woman commander of the space station. On her latest mission she traveled 122.2 million miles and went orbited Earth 4,623 times. She was born in Mt. Ayr, Iowa.
All of these women – from the pioneering aviators to the pioneering women in aeronautics – have helped clear the way for this generation, and future generations, to fulfill their dreams of flying!
Girls in Aviation Day is sponsored by Women in Aviation International. Women in Aviation International (WAI) hold events are being held world-wide and include one in Dubuque, IA, which is sponsored by the WAI University of Dubuque Chapter. Contact Polly Kadolph for more information.
Resources:
Michele Wehrwein Albion, editor. 2015. The quotable Amelia Earhart. Albuquerque : University of New Mexico. Engineering Library TL540.E3 A3 2015
Russo, Carolyn. 1997. Women and flight : portraits of contemporary women pilots. Washington, D.C. : National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Boston : Bulfinch Press. Engineering Library FOLIO TL539 .R87 1997
Winters, Kathleen C. 2010. Amelia Earhart : the turbulent life of an American icon. New York : Palgrave Macmillan. Engineering Library TL540.E3 W57 2010
Holt, Nathalia. 2016. Rise of the rocket girls : the women who propelled us, from missiles to the moon to Mars. New York : Little, Brown, and Company. Engineering Library TL862.J48 H65 2016
Eschner, Kat. June 16, 2017. Meet the Rogue Women Astronauts of the 1960s Who Never Flew : But they passed the same tests the male astronauts did – and, yes, in high heels. SMARTNEWS : Keeping you current. Smithsonian Institution.
Riley, Ricky. June 29, 2016. This Black NASA Mathematician Was the Reason Many Astronauts Came Home – Their Life Depended on Her Calculations.Atlanta Black Star.
NASA Langley to dedicate building in honor of Katherine Johnson.
NASA Women of Stem. August 3, 2017. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA.
Gallentine, Jay. 2016. Infinity beckoned : adventuring through the inner solar system, 1969-1989. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press. Engineering Library TL795.3 .G355 2016
Beginning geometry students might remember finding the area of a circle – pi x radius squared…. But, what is Pi (π) and why does it rate its very own day?
Pi is one of the most famous and mysterious of numbers. Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it’s diameter, Pi seems 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. Scientists have calculated billions of digits of Pi, starting with 3.14159265358979323…. with no end in sight. It could be calculated to infinity and there would be absolutely no way to know which number would come next.
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 π or e. All transcendental numbers are irrational, but not all irrational numbers are transcendental. . .
Pi is used all around us every day – Christian Constanda, 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.”
Designers Cristian Ilies Vasile and Martin Krzywinski transformed the number pi into stunning works of art. Check out Martin’s website for an explanation of how he creates his amazing works.
Dots are used to represent the adjacency between digits showing the progression and transition for the first 10,000 digits of pi. DailyMailAccuracy of 10,000 rational approximations of π for each m/n and m=1…10000. Martin Krzywinski.
Want to see what 100,00 digits of Pi look like? Go here.
The number 360 occupies the 360th position in the digits of Pi.
Divide the length of a river – with all the bends and curves – by the length of the river would be “as the crow flies,” the average ration will be approximately Pi. Watch this youtube video for an explanation!
In 2008 a crop circle with Pi embedded in it appeared near Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, England.
Want to impress your friends with how many digits of Pi you can recite? Here is a song that should help you remember….
Code Embed: Cannot use CODECJ3 as a global code as it is being used to store 4 unique pieces of code in 15 posts
The Pi Song. Originally sung by Hard ‘N Phirm. Sept. 17, 2006
Take a look around today – how many instances of Pi can you find? Or sit and contemplate a piece of your favorite pie…
Just remember – you’d be irrational to not celebrate Pi Day!
Resources:
Adrian, Y. E. O.. The pleasures of pi,e and other interesting numbers. 2006. Singapore : World Scientific. Engineering Library QA95 .A2 2006
Posamentier, Alfred S. 2004. [Pi] : a biography of the world’s most mysterious number. Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books. Engineering Library QA484 .P67 2004
Maths has never looked so appealing! Oct. 3, 2013. dailymail.com
The Pi Song. Originally sung by Hard ‘N Phirm. Sept. 17, 2006. youtube.com
Mead, Wendy.March 13, 2015. Fascinating Facts About Pi Day & Birthday Boy Albert Einstein. A&E Television Network, LLC. Bio.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/41/34/4134212e-602d-4b5a-bc90-47a280969781/draisine1817.jpg)
squares can come in just about any shape. You can make a waffle that is definitely not a moon, or build your own waffle tower made of waffle bricks.
