If you still remember, Pi is one of those special numbers whose value never ends.
Of course, if you’re mathematically inclined, you know there’s so much more to Pi… if not, at best, perhaps you recall that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is what defines Pi, represented as π = C/d
But that’s pretty much as far as this post will take you into the math of Pi. We’re here to explain and show you the value of Pi in an entirely different way, in a video.
The video isn’t so hum hum as would be expected either for one concerning the printing Pi on paper to one million decimal places and then rolling that paper out on an airport runway.
At the ultra small font (print size) of 8, 1 million digits of Pi stretched 1.05 miles.
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288
41971693993751058209749445923078164
06286208998628034825342117067982148
08651328230664709384460955058223172
53594081284811174502841027019385211
05559644622948954930381964428810975
66593344612847564823378678316527120
19091456485669234603486104543266482
13393607260249141273724587006606315
58817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841
46951941511609… (con’t next page)
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288
41971693993751058209749445923078164
06286208998628034825342117067982148
08651328230664709384460955058223172
53594081284811174502841027019385211
05559644622948954930381964428810975
66593344612847564823378678316527120
19091456485669234603486104543266482
13393607260249141273724587006606315
58817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841
46951941511609…
I hope you really didn’t expect to see all 1 million digits of Pi here… instead, you can try to imagine what any string of 1 million digits looks like!
And if you succeed at that, can you imagine 12 trillion digits? That’s right, according to Wikipedia, as of late 2013 the decimal representation of π has been extended to over 12 trillion digits.
But whether you can, or can’t, imagine 1 million digits, especially when printed out on paper, your curiosity is about to be satisfied in the Numberphile “Mile of Pi” video.
About the Numberphile team responsible for this:
Matt Parker (based at Queen Mary College, University of London) is known as a “stand-up mathematician” with his own unique brand of comedy and maths.
Video journalist Brady Haran is the man who makes all the Numberphile videos, including another successful project, The Periodic Table of Videos.
source: Numberphile and their YouTube videos
