GREENFIELD — National Pi Day was March 14 and in honor of the day the Greenfield Community Science Workshop served pie and spoke about the day honoring the number 3.14.
“Pi day is celebrated all over the world with many pi-related activities,” said high school student and worker Edward Lara.
The number 3.14, or pi, is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle.
“This is how many times the diameter can go into the circumference which is 3.14,” high school student and Science Workshop worker Jovanna Acevedo said.
Pi remains the same regardless the size of the circle used to calculate it. The number is infinite and can never be used as a fraction.
Lara said the Egyptians and Babylonians were the first to use pi. The Babylonians came up with an approximation of 3.125, while the Egyptians had an approximation of 3.16.
“A more accurate approximation of pi was made by the Greek mathematician, scientist and inventor Archimedes of Syracuse,” Acevedo said.
He approximated pi by calculating the area of a circle using a slightly bigger polygon and a smaller polygon.
In their research, Lara and Acevedo discovered that Archimedes’ calculations were used in court cases such as the O.J. Simpson trial.
National Pi Day also celebrates Albert Einstein’s birthday on March 14 in 1879 in Germany.
The Greenfield Community Science Workshop provided the members of the Tuesday night city council meeting with a piece of pie and a take-home bag filled with science projects.
