History of Pi Day: 3.14
HISTORY OF PI DAY
This holiday is often overlooked by those who do not speak Greek or those who do not speak Geek… but for the science major, this is a special celebration. Though it is an irregular constant number, we have the first three digits of “Pi” regularly and annually on March 14, or 3/14, or 3.14.
If one wanted to be precise, and why not, it would be at 15:92 o’clock or 4:32 pm… and 65.35 seconds, or slightly after 4:33 pm, because pi=3.141592… You get the idea.
What is Pi?
Pi is a mathematical constant that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
Pi unrolled
Origin of Pi Day
The origin of this geek holiday has been traced to a celebration led by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, where he was a physicist. It was originally hosted at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. I’ve been there many times in the 70s and ’80s. It was established in 1969 by particle physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atom bomb”.
A look inside the Exploratorium in the Palace of Fine Arts. Image: Wikipedia
No less than the U.S. House of Representatives boldly stepped out and passed a non-binding resolution recognizing March 14 as Pi Day in 2009. Your tax dollars at work.
The event has since inspired math contests, pie-eating contests, and gatherings timed at 1:59 pm to mark more digits (3.14159).
Pi Food
Pi Day is gaining traction with purveyors of the circular food.
My neighborhood has a shop called 3.14 Sweet and Savory Pi Bar. Ironically, they serve sweet and savory pies. They celebrate Pi Day as if it were their day.
My local pizza establishment in the vicinity, Il Vicino, is offering a special price on the basic pie, $3.14
Village Inn offers discounts on Pies for Pi Day
Pi Physicists
Two famous physicists have associations with Pi Day:
- Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day, March 14, 1879.
- Stephen Hawking died on Pi Day, March 14, 2018.
Computational Pi
An engineer at Google calculated Pi to 31 trillion digits, requiring 121 days, 170TB of data storage, and 25 virtual machines on Google’s cloud computing platform. It makes you wonder what this engineer is doing with their free time.
In the Star Trek episode “Wolf In The Fold,” Mr. Spock drives an evil entity out of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s ship computer by directing it to calculate Pi to the last digit. Mr. Spock informs us:
“As we know, the value of pi is a transcendental figure without resolution.”
From this, we might conclude that cloud computing is nothing compared to space computing.
Music of Pi
The life of Pi (no relation to the Academy Award-winning movie) has evolved to the point that Engadget has featured the music of Michael John Blake, who turned the first 31 decimal places into a song:
…played at 157 beats per minute, no less (or half of 314). As it turns out, however, Blake wasn’t the first to come up with the idea – composer Lars Erickson wrote his own “Pi Symphony” a few years back, and has now sparked a bit of a copyright spat on YouTube over who actually owns the rights to Pi in musical form.
You can find the Pi Symphony here.
Pi Code
Can you decipher the message on this Pi Bar t-shirt?
Pi Bar t-shirt
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
Podcast version:
[…] simple number relationships like squares and primes. You’re probably aware of holidays like Pi Day on March 14 (3.14), or Star Wars Day on May 4, “May the Force (May the 4th) be with […]
Did you notice that if you squint 3.14 (take some license with the 4) and read it backwards that it does (kinda-sorta) spell PIE? Did you eat some on Pi Day?
It works in a mirror. It’s like stepping through the Looking Glass.
-Bill