Pi Day & Skiing | The Shape of Your Turn Wouldn’t Be The Same Without It

Claire Weiss |

 

Pi sculpture in Seattle.Photo credit: lifescience.com

March 14th is a well-known Pi day. The earliest known celebration was organized by Larry Shaw in 1988 in San Francisco, where he worked as a physicist.

How many facts do you know about Pi number?

Pi is an infinite, nonrepeating decimal โ€” meaning that every possible number combination exists somewhere in pi. Converted into ASCII text, somewhere in that infinite string of digits is the name of every person you will ever love, the date, time, and manner of your death, and the answers to all great questions of the universe.

Everyone knows that pi number is the circumference of the circle divided by diameter. ย And this is important especially for skiers! If the pi number would be different how it would affect your turns?

Ski carve zone. Image credit: yourskicoach.com

The larger the radius, the less sharper turns you can make. Imagine an infinite radius for the skis and youย can only go straight, not making any turns. ย And this relationship is determined by pi number.

Here are some facts:

  1. A close approximation for pi number is 22/7.
  2. Albert Einstein was born on Pi day – Match 14, 1879.
  3. There is a sculpture for Pi number in Seattle.
  4. The sequence of six 9s which begins at the 762nd decimal place of pi is called Feynman point.
  5. ย The most decimal places of Pi memorised is 70,000, and was achieved by Rajveer Meena (India) at the VIT University, Vellore, India, on 21 March 2015.
  6. Mathematicians believe it’s more precise to say “circle has infinite number of angles”
  7. ย This sequence 123456 is not found in theย first million digits.
  8. There is a movie Pi ย (1998) about mathematician.
  9. Nerds invented a dialect known as Pilish, in which the numbers of letters in successive words match the digits of pi.

 

How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

Now I fall, a tired suburbian in liquid under the trees,

Drifting alongside forests simmering red in the twilight over Europe.

 

It’s just a few facts about Pi number, but the list can be continued and continued. And there are still many questions about Pi number – is this number random or normal, how many prime numbers are in the first millions of digits etc..

Tell us did you celebrate Pi day? How many decimal digits do you remember? What is your favorite fact about Pi?

Albertย Einstein. Image credit: Phys.org

 


Related Articles

Got an opinion? Let us know...