WHAT IS PI?

ByAugust Harrison

The Definition of

What is pi? Other than a delicious treat pi is also a very complicated number. Pi is the amount of diameters that can wrap around a circle. That number is about three or 3.14.

The people who first started the search for the number with no end, also known as pi, were the Babylonians and Egyptians, nearly 4000 years ago. It is not clear how they found their approximation for pi, but one person known as Beckman makes the claim that they simply made a big circle, and then measured the circumference and diameter with a piece of rope.

The History of

When the Greeks took up the problem, they took two revolutionary steps to find pi. Antiphon and Bryson of Heraclea came up with the interesting thought of inscribing a polygon inside a circle, finding its area, and doubling the sides multiple times. Sooner or later they figured there would be so many sides that the polygon would be a circle.

The History of continued

Approximation of

π = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510 and on to infinity. This number does not need to be typed in on a calculator every time you have to do a math problem. You simply use the number 3.14 or the pi symbol if your calculator has it.

One example of a problem that requires the number pi to be solved is this:

Say there is a circle with a diameter of 10 meters.

How would one find the circumference? By using the formula, Pi multiplied by the

diameter, it is simple to find the answer: observe.

10m*3.14=31.4m

Using pi to solve a problem

Bibliography

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~cherlin/History/Papers2000/wilson.html

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Pi_through_the_ages.html