Detachable Subdivision
"Rivne Professional College of
National University of Life
and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine"
On March 14, all progressive humanity celebrates the Birthday of the number π. This unofficial holiday was invented in 1987 by a physicist from San Francisco, Larry Shaw, who noticed that in the American system of recording dates (month/day), the date March 14 – 3/14 – and the time 1:59 coincide with the first digits of the number π = 3.14159. Scientists love this holiday very much, celebrating it with various physical and mathematical events.
This holiday was not ignored by the students of our college, because we constantly encounter this truly unique number, which denotes the ratio of the length of a circle to its diameter, in everyday life. The students conducted extensive research to learn more about this mysterious number. They presented the results of their work at the scientific and educational event "The Secrets of the Number π", which took place on March 14, 2025 in the college auditorium.
Many phenomena of the world around us bear the imprint of the number π, which we often do not notice. The circle and the sphere are ideally perfect and, at the same time, quite complex geometric objects. It is all the more surprising that these complex geometric objects at the same time act as the simplest models of many physical objects and phenomena, and to find the circumference of a circle, the surface area and the volume of a sphere, it is impossible to do without the number π!
The oldest civilizations used the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter in their calculations. It was used in the calculations for the construction of the Tower of Babel. However, an insufficiently accurate calculation of the value of π led to the collapse of the entire project.
The number π was used to calculate the length of the Earth's meridian. Knowing that the radius of the Earth is 6400 km or 6.4 * 1012 millimeters, it turns out that using 11 digits of the number π after the decimal point when calculating the length of the meridian, the error was a few millimeters. And when calculating the length of the Earth's orbit when rotating around the Sun (as is known, R = 150 * 106 km = 1.5 * 1014 mm) for the same accuracy it is sufficient to use π with fourteen decimal places.
The popularity of the number π is also added by the fact that it coincides with the birthday of the great physicist Albert Einstein.
In addition to the history of this mysterious number, students presented interesting facts about its calculation by famous mathematicians, records of memorization, in particular by Ukrainians, its application in various sciences. Those present were even able to hear how the number π sounds: American composer Michael Blake created a melody based on the digits that make up this number. This event was prepared by students of groups 11-F, 11-O, 11-P, 11-D, 11-Yu, 21-M and 22-K together with mathematics teachers Larisa TRYHUBETS and Iryna BARANOVSKAYA.
Larisa TRYHUBETS,
Iryna BARANOVSKA,
mathematics teachers
