Pi March 14th. National Pi Day.

People dress up with Pi t-shirts, drink from pi mugs, see what time it is on their pi clocks, bake pies, read math books (not really!), and watch the movie Pi. Then at 1:59 PM, they celebrate. But where does pi come from? Pi () is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Archimedes of Syracuse (287212 BCE) was the first to theoretically calculate the value of pi1. He approximated the value of pi by calculating the area of a regular polygon inscribed within a circle, and calculating the area of a regular polygon in which a circle was circumscribed, all the way up to a polygon with 96 sides! Imagine the sheer difficulty of performing all of these calculations without a calculator! Many others used a similar method to calculate the value of pi, but it was not until the 1600s that James Gregory developed an arithmetic formula for calculating pi: pi/4= 1- 1/3 +1/5 1/7 + Even with this formula however, to be accurate to just 3 decimal places you need to perform over 4000 arithmetic calculations, and an exponentially larger amount to be more accurate! In 1706, John Machin refined this formula to compute pi: pi/4 = arctan(1/5) arctan(1/239), and became the first person to correctly compute the first 100 digits of pi.2 The symbol of pi () was introduced during this time by William Jones in 1706, and was later adopted by Euler in 1737 to eventually become the standard symbol for pi. After this formula, and with the invention of computers, pi was reported to have been recently calculated to 2.7 trillion digits by a desktop computer that took 131 days, over a terabyte of memory, and a lot of money! With this irrational number being calculated by some of maths greatest minds over such a long period in history, and with such a cool-looking symbol, it is no wonder why we still celebrate National Pi Day!

Math and Art Patricia Olynyk The Mystical Powers of the SEM What do mosquito heads, deer ticks, and spiny-headed worms have in common? They produce gross images of bugs that we would prefer not to be around. If someone were to ask me Would you like to see a mosquito head or deer tick? I would probably look at them, perplexed, and call them crazy. The scanning electron microscope (SEM), however, produces unique, fascinating images of these seemingly repulsive creatures with crisp, almost surreal detail. Whereas the typical microscope uses light to form an image and has a lower resolution, the scanning electron microscope uses electrons to form an image, allows a larger specimen to be in focus at one time, and allows specimens to be magnified up to 500,000 times. This provides for both better scientific understandings of certain specimens, and visually appealing images. Thursdays class featured guest lecturer Patricia Olynyk. One of her collection of works, Sensing Terrain, particularly interested me. Olynyk uses the scanning electron microscope to examine sensory organs. For instance, she represented human corneas to represent the sense of sight, a mouses taste buds and nasal tissue to represent taste and smell, part of a guinea pigs inner ear to represent auditory senses, and the feet of flies to represent touch. Then she juxtaposes them to photographs of Japanese gardens. It was amazing to see how well the Japanese gardens enhance the images of the senses and vice-versa. What we would imagine to be repulsive or at least non-photogenic, Patricia Olynyk and the scanning electron microscope turn them into 10 feet long works of art (for a steep price!). By doing this, she is bridging the gap between science and art, and allows us to appreciate science and nature in a completely different manner. Further, she helps us understand the macro part of the world, by examining the micro. To see more images produced by the scanning electron microscope, you can go here. To see the works of Patricia Olynyk, you can go here. http://www.purdue.edu/rem/rs/sem.htm http://www.mos.org/sln/SEM/sem.html

Benoit Mandelbrot- fractals

Math and art

Benoit Mandelbrot was a fantastic mathematician who used fractal math to find order within patterns that seem impossibly complicated. These patterns are called fractals, and are essentially shapes that, when you look at a small part of it, has a similar appearance to the entire shape. The idea is that though objects appear to be complex, there should be a simple rule behind it. Fractals are everywhere: in ferns, mountains, growth patterns in leaves, cauliflower, landscapes, clouds, snowflakes and even CDs that are placed into microwaves! http://www.miqel.com/images_1/fractal_math_patterns/naturalpatterns/fractal_cd_microwave.jpg The point is, all fractals can be represented using mathematics. In fact, fractals are bounded by the Mandelbrot set, and are represented using a formula. Interestingly enough, Jackson Pollocks paintings, whether he knew it or not, can be represented using fractals. Thats right even the random expressionist drippings can be represented using fractals! The scary and remarkable part is that they make fractal objects look real, and we can already see this in movies. Though some movies use real landscapes for the setting, it is very easy to make artificial landscapes and integrate them into movies with green screens. To be able to represent nature, and random drippings using math is an extraordinary feat! http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/4572/mattepainting.jpg In addition to the practical application of finding a simple method for representing complex fractal objects, fractals make cool-looking desktop backgrounds and art! By using certain formulas and algorithms, you can input a number and the output will be a fractal image. With modern computers, making a fractal image just takes a few minutes, and the results are well worth it. It is clear that fractals are not only a way to represent complex objects in nature, but also a way to make fascinating works of art that provide for jaw-dropping images. http://phys.unsw.edu.au/phys_about/PHYSICS!/FRACTAL_EXPRESSIONISM/fractal_taylor.ht ml