We created and placed this cache in honor of Ultimate Pi Day, 3-14-15 (NOTE: Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th of every year, but Ultimate Pi- Day, where the year also corresponds to Pi, only happens once per century). The cache is a special container inside of a larger protective container, either of which can be used for tradeables. Besides the fact that the cache was placed for Ultimate Pi Day, the actual container is also designed around Pi, Pie, and other things mathematical. The observant mathematician might even notice that it is also located at a position that has decimal-minute coordinates for both latitude and longitude that also correspond to Pi (3.141 592653 . . . ). All of the initial swag that we left in the cache is also related to Pi or to mathematics in one way or another, including the special hand-made, cache-related trophy for the First to Find.
We hope you enjoy the work we put into the cache. Have fun and happy geocaching!
In honor of Ultimate Pi Day, here are several things that you may or may not know about Pi and Pi Day (extracted from the web) and this cache.
1. The area of a circle is equal to Pi times the radius of the circle squared (πr2), which is verbally stated as "Pi-R-Squared." Other than the term "squared" in this and a few other mathematical equations that involve Pi, nothing about Pi is square, but rather, Pi always refers to something round, such as circles, spheres, cylinders, cylindical cones, etc. That is why this cache is named "Pi-R-Round" instead of "Pi-R-Squared."
2. Some other common mathematical formulas that use Pi are:
Perimeter of a Circle = 2*Pi*Radius = 2πr
- or - = Pi*Diameter = πD
Area of a Circle = Pi*Radius^2 = πr2
Total Surface Area of a Cylinder = 2*Pi*Radius^2)+(2*Pi*Radius*Height) = πr2 + 2πrh
Volume of a Sphere = 4/3*Pi*Radius^3 = 4/3πr3
Surface Area of a Sphere = 4*Pi*Radius^2 = 4πr2
3. The first known official celebration of Pi Day occurred in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The event was organized by physicist Larry Shaw, and the day was commemorated with a march around a circular room, followed by a pie feast. MIT commemorates Pi Day by sending out its admission acceptances on March 14 whenever possible. Since 2012, they have been posted electronically at 6.28 p.m. in honor of 2π, or tau, which represents the relationship of a circle’s circumference to its radius.
4. The sequence 12345 first appears at position 49,702 after the decimal (so not counting the initial 3).
5. The first six digits of Pi (3.14159) have been located in six separate places in the first 10 million digits.
6. Ultimate Pi Day (31415 without the decimal point) first appears at position 88,008 after the decimal.
7. Call Pi irrational in front of a mathematician, and he/she will probably be annoyed. That’s because Pi is one of the few numbers that surpasses irrationality and becomes transcendental. While irrational numbers can’t be expressed as a fraction, transcendental also can’t be expressed using a compass and ruler. This means that you can’t draw a circle with the same area as a square, although you’ll get something very close. In fact, “squaring the circle” is a metaphor in some fields for attempting the impossible.
8. In a bit of serendipity, the number 360 (which is the number of degrees in a circle) can be found at the 359th digit position of Pi. However, the first appearance of 360 actually appears at the 285th position after the decimal.
9. An Indiana amateur mathematician claimed in 1894 that he had found a way to square a circle and proposed a bill in the state legislature adopting his formula for schools, effectively redefining Pi as 3.12. The bill passed the House unanimously, mainly because nobody understood it. Before it could reach the Senate, it got the attention of a Purdue mathematician and the press. A vote on the bill was postponed indefinitely.
10. Pi Day is also Albert Einstein’s birthday. The equations used to represent Einstein’s Theory of Relativity contain Pi.
11. The Guinness World Record for reciting Pi accurately is currently held by a man named Lu Chao. He recited it to 67,890 places. It apparently took him a year to memorize the numbers and 24 hours and 4 seconds (without a rest) to recite them. The process of memorizing pi is done often enough that it has its own name: Piphology.
12. In 1998, Givenchy introduced a fragrance called π in an attempt to capitalize on the perceived seductive quality of intelligence in men. The cologne can be purchased for around $60 and up and contains notes of mandarin and pine needles.
13. The first use of the lowercase version of the Greek letter pi (π) to represent the mathematical concept of Pi is attributed to 18th century mathematician William Jones, although his notes may attribute its use to an astronomer named John Machin. The symbol is thought to have been selected because it is the first letter in the Greek spelling of “periphery.”
14. The first people to calculate Pi on a computer were George Reitwiesner and John von Neumann. They calculated Pi to 2,037 digits across 70 hours on the ENIAC computer at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. The ENIAC is considered to be the first electronic general purpose computer.