3.141592653
Happy Pi Day
Math is a difficult concept for many to understand. One of the concepts many of us learned through grade school was about the circle. We learned about its radius, diameter, and circumference. The thing that linked all of these topics together was the idea of pi. Not a type of dessert, pi is the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of any circle. However, pi has had a long history of trying to be defined as it has an infinite amount of digits. It’s been a problem since modern times all the way up to today, even with modern technology.
Defining pi has been a problem since ancient times when Egyptians and the Indians used circles as a main part of their architectural designs. Because of this, pi was needed to make their measurements as exact as possible and many tried to get the most digits of pi as they could for the most accuracy in their structures. Thousands of years ago, Chinese mathematicians got the first seven digits of pi: 3.14159 and were simplified upon by Egyptians with the fraction 22/7 and the Indians with the square root of 10. Over time fractions for pi were greatly improved upon until it was discovered that pi’s decimal digits were random and could not be defined by a singular fraction that these civilizations tried to define. With this, new applications in calculus by Isaac Newton in the 1600’s allowed mathematicians to define pi in ways of adding small numbers infinitely until they approached pi.
Today, pi is still used for many construction and physical applications. Determining the speed of a car depends on pi with the tires being circles. Constructing ferris wheels or rounded buildings depends on pi. With modern day computers and supercomputers, we can estimate pi’s value to millionths of digits and use this as a speed test for these machines. This allows us to get any digit of pi for as much accuracy as we need for. All of these uses of pi have made it a very important number throughout history in architecture and science. This is why we celebrate pi day, on March 14th or 3/14.
Dexter Hom