[NLRS] FRIDAY (Today) IS PI DAY

[W0WOI at aol.com]

FRIDAY IS PI  DAY:  
March 14th (3.14), is  day. It's an occasion to _celebrate_ 
(http://www.teachpi.org/)  one of the most compelling and  mysterious constants of Nature. 
_Pi_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi)  appears in equations  describing the 
orbits of planets, the colors of auroras, the structure of DNA.  The value 
of  is woven into the fabric of life, the universe and  ... _everything_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life,_The_Universe_and_Everything_cover.jpg) 
. 
Humans have _struggled_ 
(http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Pi_chronology.html)  to  calculate  for thousands of years. Divide the 
circumference of a  circle by its diameter; the ratio is .  Sounds simple, 
but the devil is in the digits. While the value of  is finite (a smidgen more 
than 3), the decimal number is  infinitely long: 
3.1415926535897932384626433832795
02884197169399375105820974944592307
81640628620899862803482534211706..._more_ 
(http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/digits.html) 


Supercomputers have succeeded in calculating more than  2700 billion digits 
and they're still crunching. The weirdest  way to compute : throw_needles_ 
(http://www.angelfire.com/wa/hurben/buff.html)  at a table  or _frozen  hot 
dogs_ (http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Pi-by-Throwing-Frozen-Hot-Dogs)  on 
the floor. Party  time!