“AND HE MADE A MOLTEN
SEA, TEN CUBITS FROM THE ONE BRIM TO THE OTHER: IT WAS ROUND ALL ABOUT, AND ITS
HEIGHT WAS FIVE CUBITS: AND A LINE OF THIRTY CIBITS DID COMPASS IT ROUND ABOUT”
The above Biblical
verse was found in the list of specifications of King Solomon’s temple that was
built around 950 B.C
There are
historical evidences to prove that the area of a circle was calculated by taking
3 times the square of its radius by the Babylonians. An ancient Babylonian
tablet found between 1900-1680 B.C had the value of pi as 3.125. Ancient
Egyptians calculated the area of a circle using the formulae (8d/9)2.
Where “d” is the diameter of the circle. This formula gives an approximate pi
value of 3.1605.
An ancient
Mathematician, Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived between 287-212 B.C, derived
the value of pi based upon the area of a regular polygon inscribed within the
circle and the area of regular polygon within which the circle was
circumscribed.
In 1706, an
English mathematician introduced the Greek alphabet pi to represent the said
value. However in 1737, Euler officially adopted the symbol to represent the
value. In 1897, a legislative of Indiana tried to legally establish the most
accurate value of pi. However the Bill was not passed.
The value of
pi with first 100 decimal is 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679.
Another
interesting fact is that you would not find a zero value in that
first 30 digit of pi.
A business
man in Cleveland US, published a book in 1931 to announce the value of pi to be
256/81.if you want to print a billion decimal values of pi ordinary font it
would stretch from New York to Kansas.
Did you know
that it took Yasumasakanda, a professor at the University of Tokyo, approximately
116 hours to compute 6,442,450,000 decimal places of pi on a computer?
In 1706,
John Machin, introduced a rapidly converging formulae for the calculation of
pi. It was
π/4 = 4 tan-1(1/5)
– tan-1 (1/239)
In 1949, it took 70 hours to calculate
2037 decimal places of pi using ENIAC (Electronic Numeric Integrator And
Computer).
A German Mathematician, Ludor Van
Ceulen devoted his entire life to calculate the first 35 decimal places of pi.
In 1768, Johann Lambert proved that
the value of pi is an irrational number and in 1882 Ferdinand LIndermann, a
renowned mathematician proved that pi is a transcendental number.
Do you also know that the pi day is
being celebrated 14th March annually which is derived from its first 2 digits
and its approximation day on 22nd July annually (22/7)
When next you are anywhere on planet
earth on this days, remember the works of this great men and the fascinating
beauty of pi. Also please don’t forget to take a pie .
Thank you
