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Pi Day: Completely irrational and never-ending

Pi Day: Completely irrational and never-ending
It's a special day for a bedrock constant in mathematics: it's Albert Einstein's birthday. (Midjourney)

It's Pi (π) Day again. Every year in America – for a long time now – people have been celebrating Pi Day.

Where did this silly holiday come from? It's perhaps not surprising to learn that it emerged in tech-centric San Francisco. It began in 1988 when physicist Larry Shaw came up with the idea and grew organically over the years as a San Francisco Exploratorium museum tradition: A Slice of Pi (π) Day History.

It also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday. Of course, he was originally European, so he probably wouldn't have written the date as 3/14. Find out What Einstein would think of Pi Day, and how he crossed paths with Oppenheimer.

It also happens to be the day physicist Stephen Hawking passed away.

Water engineers will, of course, be very familiar with pi, which can help you calculate the volume of a cylinder. Legend has it that you can calculate a river's course with it. Is that true? Can you really calculate a river’s path using Pi?

Is there something special about pi that makes modeling rivers easy?

Listen to a nice poem about Pi.

To those who celebrate: Today is a good day to buy a slice of pizza or pie for just $3.14.


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