Isanhart: Mathematics

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Hannah Isanhart Isanhart-1 Geometry Miss Turner December 5, 2013 PI My grandmother is a retired math teacher so I asked her to help me understand pi. She took a cylinder shaped container out of the pantry and got a ball of string. She used the string to measure the circumference of the container and then cut the string. She used the cut piece of string to measure the diameter of the container. She held the string on the edge of the top of the container pulled it through the center and to the other edge. The string measured just a little more than three times the diameter of the container. Then she took a larger container out of the pantry and did the exact same thing. To my surprise the string measured just a little more…show more content…
The Babylonians used π at a value of 25/8 while the Egyptians used it at a value of 256/81. There is little doubt that the biblical calculations came from crude measurements but there is strong support that the Babylonians and Egyptians found π by using mathematical equations. The Greeks first focus on π was around 434 BC when mathematician Anaxagor made an unsuccessful attempt at finding π which he called squaring the circle. It took the Greeks over 100 years of study to find a value for π. In 240 BC, Archimedes of Syracuse concluded his study of π with 223/71<π<22/7. He knew the exact value of π was not 22/7 but the average showed π = 3.1418. Archimedes had found the most accurate value of π at that time and it was used exclusively until around 480 AD when Tsu Chung-Chih of China approximated π at 355/113. During the dark ages of Europe, around 515 AD, Aryabhata of Persia approximated π to 3 decimal places. A mathematician from Baghdad, Alkhwarizimi, worked with π but it was Al-Khashi from Samarkand in 1430 AD that approximated π to 16 decimal places. Then came the European Renaissance with a whole new world of mathematicians. Viete in 1593 AD expressed π as an infinite product by using 2s and square roots. In 1610, Ludolph van Ceulen calculated π to 35 decimal places followed by Snell in 1630 to 39 decimal places. In 1655 Wallis showed the value of π/2=2/1x2/3x4/3x4/5x6/5x6/7x8/7x8/9... In 1706, Machin found π…show more content…
Wow, I am glad we use the shorter version of π =3.14 to solve our math problems but what is π really used for in today’s world? The obvious answer is π is used in almost every branch of math. If you want to find the circumference of a circle, the surface area of a cylinder, the area of a sector of a circle, any measurement of a circle, cylinder, or sphere it involves π since π was used to make the circle. So with that in mind, I thought I had a good handle on where π is used in the real world today. It is used by architects, contractors, draftsmen, building and bridge designers, engineers, or just about any job that uses shapes. But as I continued my research on π I realized that was only the tip of a very large iceberg. I found π is used by electrical engineers to solve problems for electrical applications, statisticians to tract population dynamics, doctors when studying the structure of the eye, biochemists when trying to understand the structure and function of DNA, physicists studying fluid ripples, clock designers when designing pendulums for clocks, aircraft designers when calculating the areas of the skin of the airplane, signal processing and spectrum analysis, navigation for GPS systems, and the list just goes on and on. I found π helps create radio waves that make our TVs, radios, and cell phones work. A farmer can determine the amount of corn he can

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