![]() That they were able to tease a signal from the background noise of electrostatic, seismic, and hydrodynamic forces is quite a technical feat. The acceleration between the two moves the suspended ball, which pivots a mirror attached to the arm to deflect a laser beam. The apparatus the Austrian researchers built used 90-milligram gold balls, one stationary and one on a suspended arm. But researchers have done just that, using objects substantially smaller than the average high school student: two 2-mm gold balls. It is, of course, but actually measuring the attractive force would be another thing entirely. Remember basic physics and first being exposed to the formula for universal gravitation? We sure do, and we remember thinking that it should be possible to calculate the force between us and our classmates. The process was really interesting and the results were surprisingly accurate this might make a good exercise to do with kids to show them what pi is all about. The second and more entertaining video is a collaboration with Steve Mould which aims to estimate the value of pi by measuring the volume of a molecular monolayer of oleic acid floating on water. The first one deals with raising pi to the pi to the pi to the pi and how that may or may not result in an integer that’s tens of trillions of digits long. This year was no disappointment in this regard, as we found two good pi-related videos, both by Matt Parker over at Standup Maths. It’s also cool to ponder the mysteries of a transcendental number, which usually get a good treatment by the math YouTube community. We always enjoy Pi Day, not least for the excuse to enjoy pie and other disc-shaped foods. It’ll be Pi Day when this article goes live, at least for approximately half the globe west of the prime meridian. A few days ago, we’ve shown a similar Pi Day tribute, albeit a more self-sufficient one – an Arduino calculating and printing digits of Pi on a character display! We could’ve been celebrating this day for millennia, if Archimedes could just count a little better.Ĭontinue reading “Celebrating The Infinity Of Pi Day With Thermochromic Foil” → Posted in Art, Misc Hacks Tagged mathematics, Pi, Pi day, thermal printer, thermal receipt printer, thermochromic, Thermochromism This machine could print the digits until something breaks or the trillions of digits available run out, and is an appropriate tribute to the infinite nature of Pi, a number we all have no choice but to fundamentally respect. The “Pi digits calculation” part is offloaded to Google’s pi.delivery service, a π-as-a-Service endpoint that will stream up to 50 trillion first digits of Pi in case you ever need them – an ESP8266 dutifully fetches the digits and sends them off to the thermal printer. As digits are marked on the foil by the printer’s heating element, they’re visible for a few seconds until the foil disappears from the view, only to be eventually looped back and thermally embossed anew. The two main elements of this machine are a looped piece of thermochromic foil and a thermal printer. This is ’s contribution for this year’s Pi Day – a machine that shows digits of Pi in a (technically, not quite) infinite loop, and shows us a neat trick we wouldn’t have thought of. It might take you some time to understand what’s happening in the video that Hackaday alum shared with us. We applaud the upgrades, and if anyone wants to replicate the build, has posted his code.Ĭontinue reading “A Pi Calculating Pi For Pi Day” → Posted in Art Tagged Pi, Pi day, Raspberry Pi Pico This is actually ’s second go at a Pi Day pi calculator last year’s effort was a decidedly tactical breadboard build, and only supported a four-digit display. Since the calculation takes increasingly more time the farther into pi it gets, thoughtfully included a 1-Hz heartbeat indicator, to assure users that the display isn’t frozen the video below shows how slow the display gets even just a few seconds after starting up, so it’s a welcome addition. One core is devoted to running the pi calculation routine, while the other takes care of updating the seven-segment LED display with the last eight calculated digits. The heart of the build is a Raspberry Pi Pico board, which does double duty thanks to its two cores. This year, commemorated the day with this Pi-based eternal pi calculator. That doesn’t stop people from trying, of course, especially when “Pi Day” rolls around on March 14 every day - with apologies to the DD/MM set, of course. ![]() What is it about pi that we humans - at least some of us - find so endlessly fascinating? Maybe that’s just it - it’s endless, an eternal march of digits that tempts us with the thought that if we just calculate one more digit, something interesting will happen.
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