Saturday, March 14, 2015

Another π day

Here it is again, pi day. Or π day. It's a fairly new "important" day, only being around since about 1988, at least according to Wiki. It's a math geek's holiday and maybe one for scientists, too. It's also Albert Einstein's birthday. He was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany, 136 years ago. I bet he would have enjoyed the excitement surrounding our favorite Greek letter, π.

I decided that I'd make a key lime pie to celebrate the day and went off to Cub Foods to find the necessary ingredients. They have key lime juice, sweetened condensed milk and graham cracker pie crust ready made. That's really all that you need to make a key lime pie. I made one once, but today, it didn't happen. It was too nice a day to even do that much, besides I was tired from four days of tennis, and Cub had ready made key lime pie in the frozen pie section. And who doesn't like ready made frozen π. I bought one and it's sitting in the kitchen thawing out and I'll be having a piece for dessert.

There is a move on the inter tubes to celebrate tau day. Tau is defined as 2π and the ratio of the circumference to the radius of a circle. Tau is equal to 6.28, so tau day would be June 28. Something to keep in mind for those slow blogging days in June.

Instead of baking (or mixing up) a pie, NCW and I went to have a look at Minnehaha Falls. I haven't been there in a while and haven't followed the big build up of ice, or the recent melting of the ice as the winter lurched towards spring. It's a unique sight and one only seen for a week or two in the spring. Lots of people were there to enjoy the 61º temperature and walk outside on a nice weekend. There was a lot of pale skin on display, too.

The falls still has a large ice appendage that probably will fall into the creek sometime this weekend.


There was a big crowd below the falls checking out the state of the ice melt. There were, of course, a few daredevils climbing up close to the face of the falls to get a better look. We stayed above the falls and enjoyed the view and the lovely weather.


As an aside, I was reminded this morning of one of Dad's dadisms - things he said often enough that I remember them fondly and attribute solely to him. He used to say that he wasn't born, that he'd been " kicked out of a stone wall by a mule." I bet I'm not the only one to remember this bit of blarney.

2 comments:

Santini said...

He also said that he was going to live forever and then turn into a hickory post. He was a little loose with the birth and death stories.

I'm glad you mentioned Einstein's birthday -- worthy of note on a given pi day. I saw it mentioned on TV yesterday. I ran across a bunch of odd stuff while Google-ing pi day trivia, including some stuff about the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a sphere. I think I'll stick to two dimensions.

Enjoy your key lime pie! We're enjoying our pie here.

Jimi said...

I never believed that hickory post thing, but the stone wall kicking sounded plausible.

The pie was pretty good. A little too rich for my taste, but worth a bite or two. Your strawberry rhubarb sounds tasty.