National Pi Day (What You Want To Know Wednesdays)

March 14th marks national Pi Day!

What is Pi?

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle.  Pi roughly equals 3.14. It has been around for thousands of years; ancient Egyptians and Babylonians discovered that pi was a constant and used it for calculations. However, it was not dubbed “pi “  until the 18th century by mathematicians.  Here are some fun facts about Pi:

 

In 1988 Larry Shaw of San Francisco’s Exploratorium science museum started observing March 14th as Pi Day. In 2009 Congress passed a resolution to designate the day as official Pi Day.

Pi is a never-ending number. Pi has been calculated to over 22 trillion digits. It took a computer with 24 hard drives, working nonstop for 105 to make that calculation!

Pi is used in several mathematical formulas.

Someone has memorized 70,000 decimal places of pi.

In 2014, 589 people at a grammar school in Germany formed the largest human pi symbol.

Try this fun and easy activity known as Buffon's Needles, you need a large sheet of paper, at least 30 toothpicks, a ruler, and a pen. Using a toothpick to determine the distance between them, draw a series of parallel lines on your paper. Then throw the toothpicks onto the paper at random. Next, take away any toothpicks that are only partially on the paper, or that didn't land on the paper at all. Count how many are left on the paper. Also, count how many cross a line .Divide the total number of toothpicks by the line-crossing toothpicks. Now multiply by two, and you should get pi!

 

**Courtesy of MSN.Com


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