Saturday, March 14, 2015

Pi Day (Day 3.1415...)

Normally I don't post here on Saturdays. But today is the Pi Day of the Century, and I just couldn't resist posting today, of all days, on this blog.

In fact, I've decided that even though my first post to this blog was back on Pi Approximation Day, last July 22nd (for the approximation 22/7), I'm counting today as the ceremonial start of this Common Core Geometry blog, with a new background and everything.

I hope everyone enjoyed yesterday's Pi Day activity. The number that we are celebrating today is often known as Archimedes' constant, because it was first calculated to within two decimal places by Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician who lived right after Euclid. Here's how he did it:

http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/clindsey/mhf4404/archimedes/archimedes.html

Notice that Archimedes used an inscribed 96-gon to calculate his value of pi! I definitely didn't expect anyone to try drawing a 96-gon on that worksheet I posted yesterday!

If I timed this correctly, this ceremonial first post of my blog should be dated 3/14/15 at 9:26 AM Pacific Time (since I live in California).

So Happy Pi Day of the Century, Happy Birthday Albert Einstein, and welcome to my geometry blog!

No comments:

Post a Comment