Here’s how pi matters every day not just March 14

March 14 is Pi Day for 3.14, an important concept that touches almost all aspects of math and science. Let’s dish up some fun with all things pi.

In math, pi is what’s known as an irrational number — a number that does not terminate when written as a decimal number and cannot be exactly represented by a fraction.

The Guinness World Record for a calculation of pi was set in 2019 by Emma Haruka Iwao using Google cloud software. She calculated pi to 31,415,926,535,897 digits. Pi has been around since ancient Egypt and Greece but nobody calculated it past 100 decimal points until the 1700s.

1700s? That’s when a Welsh mathematician, William Jones, began using the Greek letter pi to illustrate the ratio. He didn’t choose pi because he was hungry. Pi is the first letter of the Greek words periphery and perimeter, the circumference.

Circumference? Pi can find that. The formula C=2πr, or you can multiply pi by the diameter to determine circumference. For instance in 2010, the world’s largest pumpkin pie had a diameter of 20 feet, so 20 x 3.14 = 62.8 feet around. That’s a large pie.

Large pie? In 1988, the first large scale Pi Day observations began at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Larry Shaw, a curator and physicist for the science museum, created the annual event. Due to the coronavirus outbreak the Exploratorium is closed through the rest of March. Shaw wanted to use the day as an educational lesson so he started a circular parade that went around 3.14 times, then served pies and sang “Happy Birthday” for Albert Einstein’s birthday.

Birthday? Einstein and a lot of famous people were born on March 14, such as comedian Billy Crystal, Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles and Gene Cernan, the last person to walk on the moon. Happy Birthday!

Birthday? People born on March 14 have the Zodiac sign of Pisces. Pisces is Latin for fish.

Fish? Fish need water and pi can calculate the volume of a cylinder with the formula Volume =π x (radius squared) x height. So if a cylinder’s height is 4.83 inches and the radius is 1.3 inches the volume would be that of a soda can.

Can? Pi can also calculate the area of a circle with the formula A = π x radius squared. So if a pie’s radius is 1.6 inches the area would be about eight to be ate.

Eight and ate are homophones like pie and pi. Words that sound the same but have different meanings like berry pie sale and bury pi sail. I say that is sounding a little irrational.

Irrational? Irrational numbers aren’t rare and here are three important ones that have symbols.

e, pronounced “ee” is about 2.718 …It was discovered in 1680s by Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli to calculate interest.

Phi is known as the golden ratio of a regular pentagon’s diagonal to the length of its side, about 1.61803 …

One that might even be older than pi is called “root two” or the square root of 2 which is 1.41421 … it is Pythagorean constant and is the square root of two, equal to the length of the hypotenuse (longest side) of a right triangle with legs of length one.

One? GoogleTrends has a map that shows what pie is the No. 1 choice in each state. By the way, National Pie Day is actually Jan. 23. Save me a slice.

Sources: San Francisco Exploritorium, destinationscience.org, piecouncil.org, GoogleTrends, pcworld.com, Guinness World Records

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