The Pi Ring

Had a great email exchange with a Numberphile viewer to coincide with Pi Day.

Bryce, from Australia, showed me this photo of the engagement ring he bought his future wife.

He explained:  "I chose the diamond for my finance's engagement ring based on Pi and so it is 0.314 carats. It was lucky that she wouldn't have worn a full scale Pi diamond at 3.14 carats because I couldn't have afforded that anyway!

"It is a round/brilliant cut, of course. I will be getting the Greek letter Pi engraved onto the inside of my wedding band so we have matching Pi rings."

Bryce went on to explain: "I knew for certain that she was the one when I told her the diamond was 0.314 carats, and she said 'you got me a Pi ring!'"

Pi Videos

We're marking a very special edition of American Pi Day - 3/14/15 (using the US date format).

It seems there's a glut of videos and articles being published, so I've not done anything special this year.

But, of course, I have contributed my fair share of Pi-related Numberphile videos in the past (see below).

My favourites are probably the Mile of Pi and Pi with Pies.

(Fun challenge - press play on all the videos below and listen to the Pi cacophony!)

Mr Spock

The recent death of Leonard Nimoy has people talking not just about Nimoy (a much loved actor and man, by all accounts) but also the lasting impact of his famous Mr Spock.

I enjoyed this Incomparable podcast on the topic.

But from a purely science perspective, Mr Spock (and Nimoy) have probably inspired more scientific careers than we realise.

This came through a while back in a video I made for My Favourite Scientist:

Amazing Autographs

There has been lots of interest in the latest Objectivity video about signatures in the Royal Society Charter Book.

The video focuses on Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking (because of recent news at the Oscars).

However if you want to see more of the book, there is a video last year from "sister channel" Periodic Videos which has more details.

Little Professor

The latest in Numberphile's calculator unboxing series featured Matt Parker and The Little Professor.

Dr James Grime was more serious in his discussion of the famous educational toy.

For all the unboxing videos, click here.

Surprise visit

Filming the latest round of Objectivity at the Royal Society, what a nice surprise to meet fan Vasilis, from Greece.  

He was holidaying in London and decided to visit the Royal Society's library after seeing it featured in our films. 

I suspect Vasilis was mainly hoping to meet the likes of Keith, our star librarian (which he did). 

But he was pleasantly surprised to be allowed to view documents and objects from the archive (as any visitor to the society can!).

Vasilis spent many hours poring over old manuscripts and I think he had a great time.  

Viewer 17-gons

Our Numberphile video about Gauss and the 17-gon was posted this week.

Here's David's Heptadecagon:

But equally exciting have been these efforts by Numberphile viewers.

Note these are compass and straight edge constructions. That's the point.

@dullahansolo

Charles Via Facebook

@ProgrammerHero

@enfo14

@JosselieNoirel calls this a heptafaildecagon

@kolekracaw used Geometer Sketch Pad

Earlier effort by @kolekracaw

@FordFiesta_

@MrCamago

There's an additional video about the math behind the construction.