Harvard physics lecturer on why pi endlessly fascinates us
For centuries, pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — has fascinated mathematicians and scientists. The number, which is infinite but never falls into a repeating pattern, is used in formulae throughout the sciences. For more perspective on the significance and fascination with the number, for Pi Day (3.14) the Gazette spoke with Jacob Barandes, a lecturer and director of graduate studies for physics. Q&A Jacob Barandes GAZETTE: Why do you think pi has fascinated people for so long? BARANDES: People have needed to calculate distances around circles and the areas of circles for a very long time, so the concept of pi has been around for millennia. But pi kept thwarting early efforts to pin numbers down to simple cases. Many people know that pi isn’t a rational number, meaning that it can’t be expressed as a whole number divided by another whole number. But pi is also a transcendental...