Pi Day and Albert Einstein's Birthday

I wonder what type of pie Albert Einstein liked best? I think it is pretty cool that such an important scientist was born on a date that translates to the first three digits of the mathematical constant pi.

For those of you that enjoy a bit of math humor or want to indulge in some math or science geekery, check out my EclecticSkeptic shop on Etsy. In celebration of Pi Day, 2018 all orders received before midnight on 3/14/18 CDT will receive a 10% rebate, excluding shipping, from EclecticSkeptic.

Happy Pi Day 2017

Since 1989 math and science geeks have celebrated the all important mathematical constant pi and used the day, along with other folks, as a good excuse to indulge in their sweet tooth while eating some pie. The society of physics students has also turned Pi Day into a celebration of support for undergraduate involvement in the physical sciences. Pi appears in more than just mathematical equations, it is also found in many science formulas. You can help support STEM by helping undergraduate physics students get a piece of the pi(e) through your donation. (If you don't know, I have a Bachelor of Science in Physics so I think this is a great cause.)

The pi in this piece was made from some leftover pie dough from last year's Pi Day project.

Pi Day 2016

Yes I said pi not pie. Although Pi Day also winds up being a good excuse to eat some pie as many restaurants join in the fun and offer specials on pie for the day, so search out some good deals for your sweet tooth. Pi day has also given me a good excuse to create some fun photographic art for the occasion.

But I digress. If you are a math or science geek you probably already appreciate that Larry Shaw, a physicist working at the San Francisco Exploratorium, created Pi Day in 1989 to celebrate the all important mathematical constant pi. Last year was an extra special Pi Day as I mentioned in my previous blog post. This year is a fun Pi Day too, in addition to the fact that every Pi Day date (3/14) shares the first three digits of pi (3.14). Inspecting more of pi, we see 3.14159… . If we round to the ten-thousandths place we get 3.1416, the same as this year's Pi Day date (3/14/16). I had already created this year's Pi Day photographic art piece without thinking of this, so I thought it was a cool coincidence when my husband mentioned Rounded Pi Day to me this morning.

Here is a little background on how this year's art print came to be. I had a general idea that I wanted to do something using the "pie are round" theme. In addition my experimenting with the phrasing that I wrapped around the picture of a pie, my supportive hubby experimented with baking some pies. The first pie was a strawberry rhubarb pie with a wide lattice style homemade crust. It was delicious, but unfortunately it bubbled up a bit too much between the lattice and the πr², that I cut out of some extra dough and hubby dusted with sugar, did not have enough contrast with the lattice pie crust.

Pie experiment two was an apple pie. We took the short cut of using store bought pie crusts for this one. (The resulting crust was good but not as flaky or tasty as the homemade one.) This time I made the πr² twice as thick and brushed it with an egg wash that hubby made. This made for good color contrast once the pie was baked and I had a photo to use as input for this year's math geek home décor print. You can find last year's and this year's matted photographic art prints in my Eclectic Design Choices Artisans Cooperative shop or my EclecticSkeptic Etsy shop.

Update: My 2016 Pi Day matted print was purchased as a prop and can be seen on episode 8 of the Frasier reboot!

Pi Day 2015

March 14 is almost here, what are you going to do to celebrate? Celebrate what you say? Why, Pi Day of course! (π = 3.14, March 14 = 3/14)

Ok, I admit it, I like math so I think it is fun that someone noticed the connection with the date and helped turn it into a day that at least math geeks around the world have fun with and celebrate. This year in particular is pretty fun in that on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 the first 10 digits of π will be represented by the date and time.

And this year I finally have something fun in my EclecticSkeptic shop for the math geek that is related to pi. When I looked back through my blog I noticed that I mentioned two years ago that I needed to come up with some pi goodies. My first one is a matted 8 x 10 image that puts together several fun ideas I had while riffing on pi. Probably the most obvious is the morphing of pi to pie, which I represented, not with a sweet pie but a savory mushroom and chicken quiche (pie). The image of the round pie also brings to mind the pun, "Pi aren't square, pi are round" that I often hear in my mind when thinking of the equation for the circumference of a circle (C = πr²). Then I got to thinking of the phrase "Let them eat cake" and thought it would be more fun with the word "pie". But instead of using pi or π to replace pie, the science geek in me used elements from the periodic table to spell pi.

If your eyes have not yet glazed over at my description of my recent creation (the image, not the quiche – my hubby cooked that and it was delicious) then you just might know someone that needs to hang it in their home or would enjoy one of my other math geek goodies. If not, I hope I at least made you smile and gave you a good excuse to have some pie of your choosing on March 14.

Pi Day 2013

The math and science geek in me gets a kick out of Pi Day (March fourteenth = 3.14) being celebrated around the globe and reported on mainstream news. Even if the image that is conjured in your head when you hear “Pi Day” involves celebrating baked apples, flaky crust and vanilla ice cream, you probably can dredge up memories of geometry class and calculating the circumference of circles. It is even possible that when your teacher introduced the class to the equation C = πr², that the class smart aleck blurted out, “But pie aren’t square, pie are round!” Pi can be found in a host of other math equations and ones used in physics as well.

This got me thinking that I have been remiss about having pi items in my geekery section of my EclecticSkeptic Etsy shop. I do have other math and science themed items. However I am going to have to think about coming up with pi goodies for the math geek too. I do have several items for the music geek and since music and math have many connections such as the fibonacci sequence, I wondered if pi might be one of them. What I found on a search for a use of pi in music was a range of songs that have been created from the use of the digits comprising pi.

It seems that people from all walks of life are having fun with Pi Day. At the very least, you should grab a piece of your favorite pie to join in the celebration. After all, pies are round.