So today, 03-14 (March 14th), is the ever-popular Pi Day because those digits are the beginning of that never-ending, irrational number known as pi. Oh, and it’s also Einstein’s birthday … Happy Birthday, Albert!
Pi (3.14159…) is the calculation of the area of a circle. Mathematicians have only been using the Greek letter Π (pi) since the 1700s AD, but ancient Babylonians were attempting the calculation possibly as early as 1900 BC. They took 3 times the square of the radius of a circle to derive an approximation of pi at about 3. Also, the ancient Egyptians were using a formula that resulted in 3.1605 in about 1650 BC. That’s a long time ago and pretty darn close!
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| Sand Raking created American artist Andres Amador - learn about this and see more of his work at: http://tinyurl.com/78huk6q |
The Prince of Pi (also known as physicist Larry Shaw) founded and has promoted an international celebration, both live and on-line, at the Exploratorium. Watch their webcast on explo.tv. Lots of fascinating science stuff there!
Mona Wilkerson made her quilt she called Traditional as Apple Pi for a quilt challenge in 1998. It is 24” x 24” because as she wrote, ”I just know that pi had to be square”. Quilters are too funny!
As for me, I’m going to celebrate Pi day in a very predictable fashion … with a piece of pi – oops, I mean Pie. Larry will be serving pie at his celebration and I’ll join him for a virtual slice.
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