Thursday Thoughts: Happy Pi Day!
The Story of Pi (You knew it was coming, didn’t you?)
History always takes place in the past. Funny how that works.
It was a warm summer day in ancient Babylonia and Mrs. Mathonia was doing her weekly baking. As she was rolling out her pastry, she feared she was not going to have enough to cover the date pie.
Fortunately, she had three different pie pans, each of various sizes. “Which one to use, which one to use,” she muttered under her breath. She looked at the circle of pastry, then at the first pan. “Too small,” she said to no one in particular. She then picked up the largest one and placed it upside down, covering up the entire pastry. “Too big,” she said to the same no one.
She began to ponder. “If the first one is too small…and…the second one is too large…then it must be…” She pointed at the middle pan. “That one!”
She assembled her date pie and set it in the oven to bake. As she was tidying up, her daughter came in, peered into the oven, then said, “Mommy, what is the surface area of the crust you used?”
“That’s a good question honey. But the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a pie crust hasn’t been discovered yet.”
“What about pizza?”
“Nope.”
“Tortillas?”
“Nope.”
“What about this Frisbee?”
“Still no.”
Her daughter went to her room and came out two hours later with some calculations on a clay tablet. “Is this right?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s a very good question, honey.”
Later that day, when her father came home, she gave it to him with a smile. He looked it over and said, “Thanks, dear.” When she left, he then lit a cigarette and noted to himself that although the intention was there, it was a pretty shitty ashtray…
Later that year, a sanitation worker found the tablet and recognizing it for what it was, turned it over to the culinary department of the local technical college, where it was used to create perfect pastry crusts with no waste.
True story.
Fast forward a few bunches of years, Young Archimedes (soon to be a primetime sitcom on ABC) was making major discoveries with his new Casio calculator. After getting over his case of giggles when he entered 5318008 and turned it upside down, he got to work defining Pi to be 3.14 and some change.
After yelling “Eureka!”, a word he had invented in his bathtub the week before, he declared, “Ninety-nine percent of all people will learn this and never use it.”
Now, that’s a true story you can believe.
-Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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