Pi Day
Written by: Emily Vargo
March 14 is a special day. It is a holiday for scientists, mathematicians, and all of those who have a love for science across the globe. It is an exciting mathematical day where we get to celebrate the awesomeness of pi and anything round since pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter or 3.14….
An amazing pi-incidence is that Albert Einstein’s birthday is on pi day and this year, on pi day, will mark the third anniversary of Stephen Hawking’s death.
Many people celebrate by making and/or eating pie and memorizing as many digits as pi as they can. The website, https://holidappy.com/holidays/25-Best-Ways-to-Celebrate-Pi-Day-314 list some different and interesting ways to celebrate pi day such as writing a pi-ku or other pi related poems, running or walking distances of 3.14, or watching math related movies like Good Will Hunting.
I asked a few students what Pi day means to them.
Coi a freshman said, “Pi day is the greatest most legendary day of all time where you count 3.1415 and so on… as well as eating as much pie as you can”.
A student who wants to stay anonymous states they thought it was “a day that revolves around a number that contains everything to our universe.”
The first ever pi day celebration took place at a San Francisco-based interactive science museum which featured a parade and eating fruit pies. Each year the festivals drew increasingly larger crowds that eventually in 2009, the U.S. The House of Representatives passed legislation to make Pi day a national holiday. To find out more, check out the Pi Day website https://www.piday.org/
Pi is an irrational, transcendental number that continues on indefinitely. In order to use pi in problem solving, the number is abbreviated to the first three numbers which are 3.14 or the fraction of 22/7. Since the mid-18 century, the symbol of pi, which was taken from the first letter of the Greek word “periphery” and “perimeter.” (meaning circumference) is used in formulas to successfully calculate problems.
Many admiral scientists have toiled over pi, calculated over the digits, and have applied it to countless areas of mathematics. The Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes is the most commonly credited to being the first person to accurately calculate the estimated number of pi.
Today with the help of modern day technology, pi has been calculated to 31 trillion digits but you only need the first 39 to perform all possible calculations with virtually no error. Pi occurs in many different forms like circumference, area of a circle, cylinder, sphere, cone, the volume of a cylinder, the surface area of a sphere, the volume of a sphere, and that’s just a few to name. So for this pi day enjoy all things round and have some pie with friends and family.
