Saturday, 14 March 2015

Pi-endulum (updated)

Happy Pi Day!

You may have been hearing a little bit more about Pi Day this year since we can time it exactly to 3.1415926* (although that depends, as always, on how you write your date**). Matt Parker of Standup Maths has made a really nice video showing how a pendulum can be used to calculate pi.

I have a slight quibble with him saying a pendulum has nothing to do with a circle because they are related via sine functions, but it's not immediately obvious, so I'll let it go.

Also? PI pi smackdown!



Edited to add: And naturally Vi Hart has chimed in...


*That last digit should really be 7 since we're rounding. Hence my posting time.

**More pertinently, on how you've set up Blogger write your date. Let's just pretend, shall we?

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