What is a practical or everyday use of the Pi (“π”)?
In: Mathematics
Ive used it to work out what diff and gear box ratios work best for doing an engine seap on a car. Need pi to find the wherl circumference to get the final speed etc
Also used it to work out capacity of a cylindrical fuel storage tank so can order the correct amount.
Same with ordering concrete to fill circular support piers.
When you want to figure out if it’s more cost effective to get two medium pizzas or one large one.
I had to use it to figure out how much mulch to buy for this tree we planted and I was SO MAD because I had nagged my teachers for a reason why this was important to learn and it was just, “You might want to be an engineer.” “I won’t.” “You might.” “I won’t.”
Flash forward years later to me standing in the Lowes gardening center realizing I should have paid attention.
It’s useful to know that the circumference of a circle is proportional to its diameter, and the area of a circle is proportional to the square of its diameter. The exact value of the ratio (that is pi) is not useful in daily life.
Calculating the length of anything along an arch or circle. Or calculating areas/volumes of circular or cylindrical objects. It doesn’t happen often, but it was useful as hell for figuring out how much edging and grass I needed for the curvy bits of my yard.
One time in getting my pilots licenses I panicked on a question. I couldn’t remember how they wanted me to solve it, but I needed to know distance of an arc. It’s basically just a section of a circle and I had the distance to the center so I figured it out pretty accurately.
Now computers do that though, so I guess it was only practical in the sense that I passed a test
Anytime you do any math involving circles you utilize Pi.
If you want to know how much pizza you have, you use Pi to figure that out. If you want to know how fast your bike wheel is spinning at a certain driving speed, you use Pi. If you want to determine how much fence you need to cover a circle of a certain size, you use Pi. Really, anytime you use math involving circles, you will utilize pi
Pretty much all trigonometry uses pi, especially stuff involving angles, circles, rate of spin. Not exactly everyday use for everyone, but uses that are a part of the machines and infrastructure we use every day.
You guys don’t spend much time painting lighthouses or painting lines on sports pitches?
A really important place that π just can’t help but appearing is signal processing.
Now, you don’t have to do it yourself, but all the mathematics needed for WiFi, digital music, GPS and so on rely on π.
This is because waves that last 2π per cycle have *extremely* useful properties, that make the maths so much easier.
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