At 9:27 am this Saturday, scientists and mathematicians around the world will celebrate a one-in-100-year event.
International Pi Day, which honours one of the world's most recognisable mathematical symbols, is traditionally celebrated on March 14 at 1.59 pm – a date and time that gives the first six digits of the number pi (3.14159) in the US date format.
This year, Pi Day falls on 3/14/15 – a sequence that won't occur for another century. Although some pi enthusiasts will stick to the traditional time, many will kick off celebrations at 9.27am, permitting them to indulge in a further two digits (3.1415927) of their beloved irrational number.
How cool is that?
Fun Facts
Competition between the world's top mathematicians to calculate pi to ever more decimal places has set the record at eight quadrillion digits
The record for memorising Pi was achieved by Chao Lu (China) who recited Pi from memory to 67,890 places, at the Northwest A&F University, Shaanxi province, China, on 20 November 2005. Chao Lu, a chemistry student, attempted the record after practising for 4 years. The attempt lasted 24 hrs 4 min
Put your pi knowledge to the test here.
"On Pi Day, I will think about the nature of a day, as Earth's rotation on its axis carries me on a circle 21,000 miles (34,000 kilometers) in circumference, which I calculated using pi and my latitude,"
Marc Rayman, chief engineer and mission director for NASA's Dawn spacecraft.
