Link Round-Up: Pi Day

For Pi Day, Shannon at a periodic table has created the apple Pi, a wonderfully clever apple pie where the fruit and crust adornments are cut into numbers. Via: A Periodic Table

I think it’s safe to say this may be the geekiest baking project I’ve done to date. And that’s saying something, as I am prone to geeking out in the kitchen a wee little bit. I mean, it’s a pie made entirely of apple numbers. And then topped with more numbers, this time of the crust variety. Oh, and not only numbers, you see, but the numbers of that beloved symbol of Nerdland (and I mean that in a good way), Pi.

Pi Day is the holiday on which geeks commemorate the mathematical constant π. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and it is approximately equal to 3.14, which is why we choose March 14th to revere this amazing pillar of math.

The Greek letter π is used because it’s the first letter of the word περίμετρος (perimeter in Greek) and thankfully for the day’s celebrations it is pronounced like the word “pie,” making pie the perfect food to mark the occasion with.  Here are some of the best recipes for Pi pie from around the net:

• A pie that has pi’s within the pie!
• An Archimedes Pi
• A Key Lime Pi
• Mini Apple Pi Pies
• Some more Pi Pie recipes

Of course baking doesn’t have to stop with pies. Anything you can bake can be turned into a celebratory creation by shaping it into a Pi (cookies anyone?) and don’t forget about pizzas! You can also go the simple route of consuming foods that start with Pi like pineapple and pine nuts.

π is fascinating because of its importance in so many scientific calculations and because it’s an irrational number, meaning that its value cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction having integers in both the numerator and denominator. As a result its decimal representation never ends and never repeats. A lot of effort has been put into calculating it and the latest record is at 5 trillion decimal places. Due to the simplicity of its definition, π is the most recognised mathematical concept and has a strong position in popular culture.

Listen to some music

Pi has inspired some people to even write songs about it. Here’s the top 3:

• Kate Bush – Pi (wait until 1:48 when the digits begin)
• Mathematical Pi
• Lucy Kaplansky – Song About Pi

Get your Geek on

The Raspberry Pi is a well anticipated little computer. Head over to element14, enter their competition about what you would do if you had one and you might be the winner, which of course will be announced on Pi Day!

Back in 2008 someone created this amazing crop circle. At first people were baffled with the meaning of it, then a retired astrophysicist named Mike Reed found that it’s a representation of the first ten digits of Pi.

For a week or so after it appeared, detailed images of that formation went out around the world via the Internet (not the mainstream news), and were seen by thousands of interested people. Yet no one could figure out what the new picture was trying to tell us. Finally on June 5, a skilled physicist-engineer from North Carolina by the name of Mike Reed (reedev.com) realized by simple inspection that it encoded the fundamental constant pi = 3.141592654 to ten digits of accuracy.

Each individual digit from pi = 3.14….. was drawn in the field with 36 degrees of rotation, in order to specify a full ten-digit number over four spiral turns. For example, its first digit “3” was drawn with 3 x 36 = 108 degrees of rotation, while its second digit “1” was drawn with 1 x 36 = 36 degrees of rotation, then its third digit “4” was drawn with 4 x 36 = 144 degrees of rotation, and so on. There was even a small decimal point placed close to the center between digits “3” and “1”, to tell where the fractional part of pi began.

If you want to read the full story of how Pi is represented, read this article.

Calculate Pi with frozen Hot Dogs

Calculating Pi is easy (just divide a circle’s circumference with its diameter) but there are also experimental ways to calculate it. The most fun is the one detailed in this wikiHow article, using frozen hot dogs.

Events

Pi Day was created back in 1988 by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Staff of the Exploratorium and the public would gather for the event, march around one of it circular spaces and then consume fruit pies. Since then, more people have started celebrating Pi Day and hosting events and challenges. Here are some ideas:

• The San Francisco Exploratorium continues to hold Pi Day events every year. Join them this year so you can meet Larry Shaw in person, sing a birthday song to Albert Einstein and have a piece of pie.
• If you are around Princeton, then join them for their annual celebration. Events include a tour of the Einstein Exhibit and a movie showing of Ball of Fire.
• Can’t find a local event? That’s what online challenges are for. First is the Pi Day Challenge, a series of logic-based puzzles starting on March 14th. Second is the Pi Day Baking Challenge, brought to you by Serious Eats and Instructables with a chance to win an iPad!

And, of course, if you're just stuck at home or caught unawares, you can always go the easy route by just spending the day watching π by Daren Aronowsk.