3/14 Happy Pi Day

March 14 (3/14) is celebrated annually as Pi Day because the date resembles the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — 3.14159265359... or, rounded off, 3.1416. 2016, therefore, provided a particularly good reason to celebrate: 3/14/16. The year before (3.14.15) was significant because it matched the first four digits after the decimal point - now we're back to regular old Pi.

Archimedes (wiki) (circa 287–212 B.C.) is credited with doing the first calculation of Pi. British mathematician William Jones came up with the Greek letter and symbol for the figure in 1706, the use of which was later popularized by mathematician Leonhard Euler (wiki), beginning in 1737.

Here's a good general explanation of Pi (kid-oriented, but that makes it straightforward):

And here's what Pi sounds like:

Friday links

It's St. Bartholomew's Day - some history (including the massacre), a brief documentary, and Monty Python.

What Mathematics Has to Do With The Seven Bridges of Königsberg

U.S. Senate Monorail - A Private Subway System for Senators Under Washington D.C. Since 1909.

It's the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and destruction of Pompeii in A.D. 79.

In the 1960s, the U.S. Government Set Off a Pair of Nukes Under Mississippi.

What could go wrong? Crocodiles have learned to use tools.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include why smartphone screens are three times dirtier than a toilet seat, Dorothy Parker's birthday (including the weird journey of her ashes), the etymology of 'orange', the history of U. S. dollar bill design changes, and an eye-searing set of awkward Russian glamour photos.

Friday links

This short 1901 film has some rather impressive special effects: The Fat and the Lean Wrestling Match.

The Mathematics Of Measuring Cups.

The Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, traveled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away.

Flowers Have Secret Blue Halos That Bumblebees Can See.

10 Fun Fashion Facts from the Middle Ages.

How The Princess Bride Built Film’s Most Beloved Sword Fight. Here's the fight scene.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include how Martian laws will differ from Earth laws, a set of 1860s photos of the five stages of inebriation, eating the world's spiciest chip, and, for Rita Hayworth's birthday, a compilation of her dancing.

Friday links

Tomorrow (June 24) is the birthday of Ambrose Bierce, author of The Devil's Dictionary.

Caterpillars Recruit Friends with Anal Scraping. If you know of others who use the same method, feel free to discuss in the comments.

Lincoln Memorial Undercroft - A cavernous three-story, 43,800-square-foot basement that was forgotten about for 60 years. 

How To Steal Pizza Without Anyone Knowing.

How Much Businesses Pay To Get On Those Big Blue Exit Signs. 

These Massive Tunnels Were Dug By Giant Sloths.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include the history of the Aloha shirt, the first day of summer, why it's called Area 51, the rural mail carriers who count wildlife on their routes, and how cats used humans to conquer the world.

How To Steal Pizza Without Anyone Knowing

This would work with anything round (think cake or pie):



Related: The Scientific Way To Cut A Cake (or pizza...):

Friday links

If you grew up in the 1980s, or have kids who did, you'll love this: Supercut of dancing in ‘80s movies (set to Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling”)

Habits of highly mathematical people.

11 Weird Sports That Were Actually In The Olympics. Kind of related: Watch The Opening Ceremony of the 1936 Nazi Olympic Games.

From 1944, head shots of all of the ways US intelligence thought Hitler might try to disguise himself.

A 1730 map of Paris.

The Origins of All 30 Major League Baseball Team Names.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include the experimental nuclear reactor secretly built under the University of Chicago, photographs of elegant in-flight airplane dining from the 1950s, the use of trial by touch to determine guilt in colonial America. and a set on anti-communist propaganda posters (including my personal favorite, "Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?").

Wednesday links

It's the anniversary of the 20th of July plot, the unsuccessful bomb attempt to kill Hitler in 1944.

These photos are quite extraordinary: c. 1890: Venice in Photochrom.

Doing the math: Calculating the Ghostbusters' 35 Foot Long Twinkie in Real Life.

Male contraceptive news: just wear a polyester sling, and let the heat and the electrostatics do all the work, with bonus Monty Python.

Miracle breakthrough in high-tech armpit cooling. Be sure to translate.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. 

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the world’s largest Nerf gun, bad taxidermy, how much of his ear Vincent Van Gogh sliced off, testing mobility in medieval armor, and drawing eyes on cow butts to protect them from lions.

Tuesday links

The first shots of the Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter

These unlucky people have names that break computers

I keep hearing ads on the radio for this: The McDonalds Monopoly Fraud: from 1995 to 2001, there was only one real winner - Uncle Jerry.

Get the Nobel Prize ready: Powdered Booze Could Fix Your Clogged Arteries.

You can judge a lot about an animal from its snout.

Man hacked random-number generator to rig state lotteries.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include wasps building rainbow colored nests, the peculiar history of life insurance, a Women are teachable 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees" and a 1967 booklet on how to get a man, and advice from 1658 on giving up wine (spoiler - there are decomposing eels involved). 

Wednesday links

On March 30, 1848, Niagara Falls Ran Dry, with bonus Niagara Falls sketch by Abbott & Costello and The Three Stooges.

Before computers: Inside the FBI’s Colossal Fingerprint Factory.

In this 2.5 minute video, Carl Sagan lucidly explains how Eratosthenes not only deduced a spherical earth, but accurately calculated its diameter in 200 B.C.

For Van Gogh’s birthday, his recently-discovered sketchbooks and the unexpected math behind "Starry Night"

Prozac in the Water Makes Fighting Fish More Mellow.

The Demonic Origins of Ventriloquism.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the history and calculations behind Easter's varying dates, a gallery of Easter bunnies terrifying children, and a collection of videos of violence against marshmallow peeps.

Monday links

A video tour of the (excellent) Museum of Bad Art.

How Not to Get Killed by a Cow. Related, from the archives: Brit farmer turned Nazi super cows into sausage because they were too aggressive.

The Canary Girls and the WWI Poisons that turned them Yellow.

The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

Got an extra $8.4 million? Michelangelo’s Tuscan is Villa For Sale.

Picasso’s Self Portrait Evolution From Age 15 To Age 90.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include interestingly-translated Chinese restaurant menus, where dogs come from, a 1960s Russian turbojet train, and a free coloring book of weird patents. 

The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

Van Gogh's Starry Night:

A TED-Ed video - this is the description:

Physicist Werner Heisenberg* (wiki) said, “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.” As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks. Natalya St. Clair illustrates how Van Gogh captured this deep mystery of movement, fluid and light in his work.

*My favorite (and only) Heisenberg joke:

Heisenberg is driving down the road (possibly in New Jersey) when he gets pulled over by a cop.

Cop: "Excuse me, Sir, but do you know how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg: "Why, no, Officer. But I know where I am."

Friday links

Roundup of links about snow: art, science, snowmen, world's largest snowball fight, snow removal, and more.

Advice from c. 1200: How to Survive the Winter.

Something to restore your faith in humanity: Man with stage IV bone cancer saves neighbor from burning home.

Mathematicians Have Found Strange New Ways to Cut Pizza Into Equal Slices.

Alton Brown's critique of Amazon's dumbest kitchen gadgets, with bonus Amazon reviews.

10 Incredible Real Life MacGyver Moments That Saved Lives.

Online Shopping in the 1950s.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include Valentine's Day reservations at White Castle, the anniversary of French King Louis XVI's guillotining in 1793. an infographic on the evolution of the Batmobile, and, for Stonewall Jackson's birthday, the story of his left arm's separate grave,

Thursday links

Men Pee On Beehive. Bees React, Targeting The First Human Body Parts They See.

The "Monty Hall problem" (what's behind door #3?): The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman. Sasha Volokh recently wrote on his "easy" take on the same problem.

How Cutlery Affects Our Sense of Taste.

Sharknado 3 will be set in DC and have Ann Coulter as VP, Marc Cuban as Prez.

A History Of The Most Impractical Weapons Ever Used In War

The 8 year old girl who gets gifts from birds.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include Dr. Seuss's book of nudes (The Seven Lady Godivas), the history of wind chill, why female superheroes wear skimpy armor, and hacking to remotely disable cars.

Monday links

Eat your hearts (or brains, or whatever) out, zombies - Atlas Missile Silo turned into Luxury Survival Condos.

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, famous for inspiring Stephen King to write The Shining, is planning to construct a 10,000 square foot maze, and is having an open design contest.

20 Award-Winning Wedding Photographs of 2014.

Math: how long it would take 2 million people to fart enough hydrogen to fill the Hindenburg?

One man built his own dialyses machine, another built replacements for his blown-off hands: 5 Desperate People Who Hacked Junk Into Life-Saving Devices.

There Are Now Lego Astronauts Aboard The ISS.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the story of the 1969 Paul McCartney is dead hoax, turning Nazi super cows into sausage, macro photos of weird insects, and a device for butt selfies. 

Picking Your Soulmate and Picking the Cleanest Toilet at a Public Event in the Fewest Tries Has The Same Optimal Solution

From the Numberphile youtube channel:

Friday links

Weird Al Yankovic as Isaac Newton in this historical rap battle vs. Bill Nye.

Physics, the World Cup, and Bouncy Balls.

Scientific invention du jour: Chinese hospitals introduce hands-free automatic sperm extractor.

Video supercut of the classic Star Wars line "I am your father" in 20 languages, bonus Star Wars: The Musical.

It's hard to imagine why, but dating site uses facial recognition to find matches that look like your ex.

If you’re a math geek who doesn’t like sharing, you’ve been cutting cake wrong your whole life.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include honest Disney posters, report cards of famous authors, and 18th- and 19th-century patent models.

Doing the Math: How Many Tribbles Were Aboard the Enterprise?

In the classic 1967 Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles (wiki), it only takes one tribble on the Enterprise and a few hours to produce waves of tribbles pouring out of the elevators and vents. Doctor “Bones” McCoy says that’s because the little furballs are basically “born pregnant.” Captain Kirk estimates that after three days on the ship, there could be hundreds of thousands of them squirming around. But Spock corrects him and announces that there are exactly 1,771,561 tribbles on board. He is exactly right because the writers of Star Trek knew how to work a calculator.

The problem, of course, in addition to the being born pregnant bit, is that there's a new generation every three hours:

So, how did Spock know how many tribbles were on the Enterprise at the end of three days?

If you suspect that some population is growing at an exponential rate (e.g., it doubles itself pretty quickly), there is a certain way to write that mathematically. In fact, per the author of this post at Nerdist, it’s easy enough to do so that he found half a dozen math teachers and communicators that have used tribbles to teach students about the concept. 

I'm going to send you to the original post for a detailed explanation of the math, but it's pretty straightforward. Here's a graph extrapolating tribble population growth forward over an additional couple of days: