• Question: when would you use pie as in the science thing

    Asked by botter7r2 to Drew, Amy, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by corange.
    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      What this pi?

      3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196 4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091 4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273 7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912 9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798 6094370277 0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132 0005681271 4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872 1468440901 2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235 4201995611 2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960 5187072113 4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859 5024459455 3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881 7101000313 7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303 5982534904 2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778 1857780532 1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989 3809525720 1065485863 2788659361 5338182796 8230301952 0353018529 6899577362 2599413891 2497217752 8347913151 5574857242 4541506959

      …when you want to find out the circumference or area of a circle…I don’t use it much!! 🙂 🙂

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Like “how to make an apple pie from scratch … you must first invent the universe?” One of my favorite Carl Sagan quotes ever!!

      Amy’s given you the number. Whohoooh! That’s a lot of decimals. I use the number pi in a lot of computations. You would be surprised the number of places it comes up!! It is everywhere in mathematical physics. For example it is important in calculating the properties of electromagnetic waves and for all sorts of other things.

    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      There are a lot of important formulas where pi is one of the constants. Because pi is related to circles and spheres, anything that spreads out in three dimensions or uses a circular (polar) co-ordinate system uses pi. These include Einstein’s field equation for general relativity, Coulomb’s Law for electric force, and Kepler’s Third Law.

      Pi also appears in a lot of probability distributions, which are important for my own work on safety.

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Wow… amy i hope you copied and pasted that one… and dont know it my memory!

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I have only ever used pi to try and find out the area of a circle. It is a really cool number though and my maths friends tell me that it is really important.

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