Pi and the Modern World
It may seem like we know all the uses of pi, and that it all has to do with circles and other
formulas of scientific or mathematical applications. In recent years however we have been able to find a new use for
pi. This application deals more with the fact that it is an irrational number and its digits go on infinitely. This
use stems from peoples' fascination with getting more and more digits of pi breaking records of it. In fact, according
to Jorg Arndt and Christoph Haenel, two modern pi experts, most cosmological calculations do not need more than 39
digits of pi to calculate anything in the known universe. Using 39 digits is sufficient to calculate the volume of the
known universe with the accuracy down to one atom. So why keep calculating more digits of pi?
With the development of computers, we were able to start calculating all these new digits for pi.
The more computing power the computer had, the more digits it would reach. The computers would use iterative algorithms to
count quickly and to high quantities. However, in the 80's and 90's more algorithms were discovered because of this
process. New infinite series were discovered that used much less memory power than the previous algorithms so computers
were to calculate the digits of pi even faster and arrive at more and more digits of pi.
So the fact that we, as humans, wanted to get further and further into pi, we were able to
develop new and interesting mathematics as well as learn some new relationships about the world we live in. So from the
ancient Egyptians to Archimedes to modern times, pi is still a big part of the math world and it an important subject to
understand.
A Million Pi...or Digits of Pi