What is Pi?
Posted on January 20th, 2007Visualizing π in motion.
One of the harder concepts I grappled with when I was a kid was pi. Where on earth did that number come from? Now, we know the answer to that, but a very good way of visualizing it has surfaced on Wikipedia. In essence, it's an animation of a circle rolling out once. If you measure how many diameters the roll covers on the ground, you get pi.
Click to view full size.
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January 25th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Very cool. I had no idea yet I use Pi all the time. I mean, I knew there was a reason, but I did not know THAT was the reason….
January 25th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
[…] What is PI? This is a very cool graphic on BlogSci— I think it is just a moving GIF — demonstrating how the heck they came up with Pi […]
January 25th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
It makes perfect sense now that we see it. In school, we were told many times that the circumference is pi times the diameter. Since one roll is one cirumference, the graphic simply says that the roll will cover 3.14 (pi) diameters.
This would make a great school experiment with paint and a wheel.
Thanks for dropping by and the link!
Pierre
January 25th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
that is AWESOME. i never understood it until now! thanks!