Get to know your Pi – without the gravy
Do you know that the volume of a pizza of radius ‘z’ and thickness ‘a’ is equal to: ‘pi.z.z.a’
TODAY is Pi Day… not steak and kidney pie… but Pi – 3.14, that famous mathematical constant you were taught about in school.
So why the fuss?
University of Zululand Science Centre Director and scientist extraordinaire, Derek Fish, gets to the crust of the matter.
Pi Day (also Einstein’s birthday) is celebrated on 14 March (3.14 in US date format) around the world, especially in 2015 when the date read 3.14.15 which = Pi!
Pi (the Greek letter ‘?’) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent the constant you get when you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter – which is approximately 3.1415.
Historically, by measuring circular objects, it has always turned out that a circle is a little more than three times its own width.
In the Old Testament (1 Kings 7:23), a circular pool is referred to as being 30 cubits around, and 10 cubits across, giving a rough value of three for Pi.
The mathematician Archimedes used polygons with many sides to approximate circles and determined that Pi was approximately 22/7 (or 3.1429).
The Greek symbol for Pi (‘?’) was first used in 1706 by William Jones, a Welsh mathematician.
Pi has recently been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point – a special sort of number (irrational and transcendental) which will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern.
While only a handful of digits are needed for typical calculations (only 39 digits are needed to accurately calculate the spherical volume of our entire universe), Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits.
The current Guinness World Pi record is held by Lu Chao of China, who, in 2005, recited 67 890 digits of pi. Y
‘Why so much pi?’ you ask?
See if you can understand why: ?(-1).23.?. ? equates to: ‘I ate some pie!’
And do you know that the volume of a pizza of radius ‘z’ and thickness ‘a’ is equal to: ‘pi.z.z.a’!
Unizulu Science Centre will be running workshops for matric science students from 11 to 22 April focusing on the use of maths and graphs in science.
Get details from www.unizulusc.org or phone 035 7973204 to book.
