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Who Discovered the Constellation Aries
Constellation Aries is found between Taurus and Pisces. When did this begin no one exactly knows. But the Greeks are widely believed to have put the vernal equinox in the constellation.
Constellation Aries according to Greek mythology
The most popular story about how Constellation Aries began is that of Phrinux and Helle. Athamas, king of Poitia, and his wife Nephele had a son and daughter. The son was named Phrixus, the daughter Helle. Years later Athamas married a second wife named Ino. But Ino fell in love with Phrixus, who did not like her in return. Ino got so hurt by the rejection that she schemed to kill brother and sister. She planned to starve them to death. But Nephele sent a magical ram to rescue them. Phrixus survived, but Helle drowned during the rescue. Upon reaching home, the magic ram told Phrixus to offer him to the Gods. The boy obeyed and the ram found a place among the stars.
The Stars in the Constellation Aries
There are seven star clusters that make up Constellation Aries: Alpha Arietis, Gamma Arietis, Beta Arietis, Lambda Arietis, Pi Arietis, 30 Arietis, and 53 Arietis. They form the points that give the constellation a ram shape.
Alpha Arietis (or Hamal) is the brightest of them all. It is red and 50 times brighter and bigger than the sun. Gamma Arietis is made up of two stars. It is blue. Beta Arietis is smaller than Gamma Arietis and is 60 light years away. Lambda Arietis is further still at 133 light years away. Pi Arietis is also a double star. It has a bluish tint.
Meanwhile 30 Arietis is very visible. It has a magnitude of 6.6. It is yellow. There is another star near it with a magnitude of 7.4. 53 Arietis is made up of three stars that turn very fast. Experts believe 53 Arietis is part of a supernova.
Meteor showers in the Constellation Aries
There is small galaxy about 5.3 arc-minutes across Constellation Aries. It is believed to be a spiral galaxy. There are also a number of meteor showers around the constellation. One curious meter shower is called May Arietids. It occurs between May and June. Unlike most meter showers May Arietids happens during the day.
The two other visible showers are Epsilon Arietids and the Delta Arietids. The rest are too difficult to see.
Recent findings
Recently it has been proved that some of Constellation Aries’s stars have planets. A number of new galaxies have also been discovered. Some of them are NGC 772, NGC 972, and NGC 1156. They cannot be seen by the naked eye.
Constellation Aries is a spellbinding sight in the sky. According to astrology, people born under the sign of Aries are bold and optimistic.
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Who Discovered Gemini
In astrology Gemini people are difficult to pin down. They are very creative and mysterious. The only downside is, what they like today they would end up hating tomorrow.
Clusters of Gemini
Gemini means “twins” in Latin. It is a constellation named after the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. The constellation is found between Taurus and Cancer. To its north are Lynx and Auriga, to the south Monoceros and Canis Minor. Constellation Gemini has a cluster called Open Cluster M35. Northeast of Gemini is another cluster of nebula called NGC 2371. Gemini’s southern tip has Abell 21, otherwise known as the Medusa Nebula.
Gemini took its name from legendary characters in Greek mythology. Since it is a constellation, no one knows for sure who saw it first. Stars clusters have been up in the sky for the longest time.
The myth behind Gemini
According to popular myth, Castor and Pollux, were known together as the Dioscuri. Their story involved cattle theft. As such, the story was used as a symbol for the Milky Way as a herd of cows. When seen in astronomical maps, Gemini tended to lean away from the Milky Way. At times they are seen with one of the twins within the Milky Way, the other outside. So it appears as though Castor is taking the cattle while Pollux looks on. The story of Gemini is said to have given rise to the myth of the cows of Geryon.
Earliest Observers of Gemini
As early as 6000 years ago the Hindu history book called the Rig Veda already described the stars of Gemini. The Rig Veda called Gemini’s stars as the twin horsemen of the dawn. In ancient India Gemini’s stars were known as Nakula and Sahadeva. These two stars could be clearly seen at dawn in spring. This led to the belief that the twin stars meant the coming of the spring equinox. In ancient India Gemini meant Mithuna, the twins. So the old Western and Eastern meanings were one and the same.
The teachings of ancient India spread westwards to the Far East around 5000 BC. It caught on in Babylon as it did in the rest of the Middle East. Babylonians adopted Indian astronomy to keep track of the seasons for sea travel. Ancient Babylonians called Gemini as Mastabba Galgal, which meant the great twins. But the Babylonains put a spin to it: They came up with their own epic whose heroes were twins Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The great twins fought the gods in search of immortality.
Gemini in ancient Egypt and Greece
Ancient Egypt’s version took the form of twin goats which stood for the two stars told about in the Ramissede Hour Tables. The Ramissede was a book that told time through the position of stars in the night sky. Ancient Egyptians had observed that the two stars of Gemini did rise and follow each other at dawn.
Around 1000 BC, the Greeks picked up on that as well. The Greeks borrowed freely from ancient Babylonian and Egyptian astronomy. Perhaps they were a little more creative in that they embellished the stories behind the constellations with human drama.
When the Romans invaded Greece, the vicious cycle of lifting and borrowing went on. The Romans changed Polydeuces’s name to Pollux. But it came to a point where Gemini took on a single status because either one of the old names went missing for some time.
Gemini to according to sailors
Today, folk sailors still believe Castor and Pollux guide their ships and point their way back. In times of danger, Castor and Pollux send St. Elmo’s fire to signal an oncoming bad luck.
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Who Discovered Constellation Sagittarius
Sagittarius contains a number of dazzling nebulae. Seen through a telescope, Sagittarius looks like a universe of light. In Latin Sagittarius means “the archer.” The constellation is associated with a centaur drawing a bow. Sagittarius is found in Capricorn to the east and Ophiuchus to the west.
One of Sagittarius’s most spectral sights is the Lagoon Nebula (M8). It is considered a diffuse nebula: In the sky they look like scattered gold dusts. Lagoon Nebula was discovered by Le Gentil in 1747.
Earliest sightings of Sagittarius
Ancient Babylonians referred to Sagittarius as Pabilsag or Nergal, a god with wings and the head of a lion. The Greeks pictured Sagittarius as a centaur, a creature that was half horse, half human.
According to a popular Roman legend at the time, Chiron was a centaur who was the son of Saturn and Philyra. Saturn changed himself into a horse to break free from his very possessive wife, Rhea.
Being the son of a god, Chiron was born very smart. He was exceptionally good at hunting, poetry, music, war, medicine, and the study of the stars. Chiron taught young Greeks in a cave beside the mountain. His pupils observed him to be quiet and reserved. He seemed to be aloof and lost in his thoughts most of the time. He was never known to have a girlfriend.
Now one of his pupils was Hercules. Hercules would come to the came even when there was no class. He liked to talk for a bit with his teacher long after classes were finished. On one such occasion, and with wine to go with the talk, a pack of drunk centaurs attacked student and teacher. In the wild scramble one of Hercules’s poisoned narrows scraped Chiron by the arms. The arrow’s poison was made from the blood of Hydra. Chiron was immortal, therefore he could not die. But he could not endure the poison’s pain.
To relieve himself, he gave up his immortality in exchange for Prometheus’s freedom from torture. Zeus, the supreme god, took the offer with much respect for Chiron. In the end instead of leaving Chiron in Tartarus as agreed, Zeus placed him in the sky as constellation Sagittarius.
When you look at the southern hemisphere skies between June and July, Sagittarius outshines the rest of the constellations. At the height if the winter solstice the sun appears in Sagittarius.
Sagittarius according to the Greeks
The ancient Greeks told of the story of Crotus, a satyr that lived with the muses on Mount Helicon. Crotus played music and sang in the choir. He was the inventor of clapping at the end of a play and music. Crotus always did that with perfect timing and with such flourish that he endeared himself to the Muses. When Crotus died, the Muses entreated Zeus to honor the great clapper by placing him up in the heavens. Zeus made a constellation of a centaur instead of a satyr, recognizing Crotus’ other skill as a great rider.
In some quarters today, there is still confusion about whether Sagittarius was Chiron or Crotus. It is more likely that the Romans tweaked the story. Ancient historians like Ovid, Hyginus, and Diorosos concurred that Chiron was a Centaur and not a satyr.
People born under constellation Sagittarius
Sagittarians are known to be very optimistic. As such they are full of energy. They also love adventure and travel.
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Who Discovered the Constellations
Stars fascinate people all the time. Ancient and old civilizations have different ways of looking at stars. Some viewed stars as signs, some as other worlds. Farmers, poets, seafarers took the stars as reminders of good and bad luck. Ancient land and sea wanderers used the stars as memory aids so they would not be lost.
On the other hand, farmers read the stars to prepare for a good or bad harvest. This lead to planting and harvesting seasons. In parts of the world where different constellations appeared in different seasons, they used the stars to tell the month instead. For instance, constellation Scorpius can be seen only in northern hemisphere skies in summer.
For the record
The oldest record of star-gazing was found in Sumerian board games around 4000 BC. Sumerians named the stars after their gods. Early Chinese constellation had much in common with Middle Eastern and Western constellation. The Babylonians had divided the zodiac into 12 signs by 450 BC. The present constellation is largely based on Egyptian astrology. The Greeks named 48 constellations.
Constellation controversy
By the end of the 16th Century European seafarers drew maps of the austral hemisphere. Pieter Dirckz Keyser added a few more constellations while on board a ship to the East Indies in 1595. His version was added to Johann Bayer’s, a German cartographer who published an atlas of Europe. More European experts offered new constellations such as the French Nicolas Louis. The International Astronomy Union fixed the number of constellations to 88.
The 12 constellations on the ecliptic side were called as the Zodiacs. Twenty-nine constellations lie between the North Celestial Pole and the ecliptic. The constellation Ophiuchus is part of the ecliptic side. The remaining 47 constellations are found between the South Celestial Pole and the ecliptic side.
Constellations today
Many of the old constellations have been changed. Their positions have been fixed in the sky. Of the 88 constellations, three animals appear twice: Pisces/Pisces Austrinus, Ursa Major/Ursa Minor, and Canis Major/Canis Minor. The northern hemisphere constellations have not changed for the last 2000 years.
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Who Discovered Constellation Leo
Constellation Leo is very easy to spot in the night sky. In spring it takes up much space in the northern hemisphere. In autumn Leo runs to the southern hemisphere. Leo is the fifth zodiac sign, but is the most visible of all.
How do you know you are looking at Leo? You are supposed to see a crouching lion that looks to the west. You should see the head and mane clearly, above which hangs a sickle of stars. If the sickle is not sharp enough, you should see an inverted question mark at least.
Leo’s brightest star is Regulus. It is found south of the pointy stars of the Big Dipper, northwest of Virgo. Leo shines brightest on or around March 1.
Leo in ancient Egypt
The figure of a lion has been associated with the sun since the earliest times. Belief in the lion as symbol of the sun began in ancient Persia. More than 5000 years ago, the sun “passed over” Persia and Egypt at the height of the midsummer solstice. From then on Leo was lumped in with the coming of high summer. Leo’s time was poetically called “the realm of the sun”. On closer inspection, you cannot miss the Sphinx’s body, which is that of a lion.
Even in ancient Africa, the lion stood for strength and power. It is no king of the beasts for nothing.
Leo in the story of Pyramus and Thisbe
According to Roman mythology, Leo was the symbol of the Nemean lion, one of Hercules’s greatest fights. Hercules was tasked to skin a gigantic lion whose hide did not even bruise against metal and stone. Being a demigod, Hercules managed to pin down the lion with his bare hands. He choked the lion to death and skinned it with the use of its own claws. The hero took home the hide as his trophy, but not without turning it into an invincible cloak. The lion’s head he made into a helmet.
To the ancient Greeks, the Leo figured in the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Ovid’s Metamorphosis recounts of how Pyramus and Thisbe’s parents objected to their romance. Sounds like Romeo and Juliet? It must have been one of the ancient sources. What the two-star-crossed lovers did was talk through a tiny hole in the wall that divided their houses. One day they hatched a plan to meet far outside the city. It had to be right next to a mulberry tree. When the day came, Thisbe came all by herself. Pyramus was nowhere in sight. She waited for some time and soon enough a lion fresh from a kill strayed by.
Thisbe ran for her life. She was just quick enough to get her body out of the lion’s way. Instead the lion snapped and pawed at a piece of her veil. Pyramus arrived late to see Thisbe’s veil in bloody pieces. He instantly thought Thisbe was mauled dead by the lion. He pulled his sword and drove it deep into his body. Pyramus did not think twice to kill himself to be with his love. Thisbe came back and saw her dead Pyramus. She threw herself on Pyramus, cried hard, and thrust the bloodied sword into her body. The lovers’ blood soaked into the white mulberry flowers. And the deep red color stayed ever since. The supreme god Zeus hung Thisbe’s veil up in the sky, with the lion just above it. The veil was later known as Coma Berencies.
Leo in ancient Middle East
Leo’s moon, Regulus, got its name from Copernicus. The name originally meant “the little king.” The ancient Sumerians called Regulus as the “star of the king.” In ancient Persia and Iraq, Regulus was called “the flame” or “red fire.” They associated red fire with the onset of an extremely hot summer. Ancient Persians considered Regulus one of the four royal stars: The other royal stars were Fomalhaut, Aldebaran, and Antares.
By 2300 BC ancient astronomers in the Middle East had observed that the sun moved in near Regulus. As it did, the summer grew hotter and hotter. The ancients gave this role to Sirius at a later time.
Meanwhile, the stars of Leo formed a horse in ancient Chinese zodiac.
Leo’s stars
Two of leo’s famous stars are Algiebra and Wolf 359. Algivebra is abinary system (meaning a pair). The brighter one looks like giant orange, right next to a giant ripe lemon (the smaller pair).
Wolf 359, on the other hand, the least visible of Leo’s stars, in spite of being popular. It was discovered by Max Wolf in 1918.
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Who Discovered the Quadratic Formula
This is the quadratic formula: x1,2=(-b/2a) ± (1/2a)(b2-4ac)1/2
It is said the quadratic formula has been used and known by man for thousands of years. The equation has changed a number of times, too.
Some 2000 years ago, the Chinese, Babylonians, and Egyptians already knew the area of a square levels with the length of its sides. Using bales of hay, they figured they could stack nine bales more if the roof space were three times wider. The Chinese, Babylonians, and Egyptians could compute the area of other complex shapes.
But they did not know how to work out the sides of those shapes. And so they were faced with a bigger problem: They had to be able to calculate the length of the sides starting from a certain point. The shape should be leveled with a total area using the lengths of the sides.
How the Egyptians used the quadratic formula
1, 500 years ago, the Egyptians did not use numbers like we do today. They expressed mathematical problems using words. But Egyptian scribes skirted the quadratic equation issue by solving the area of all sides and made a reference chart. They made up something like a multiplication table. That made computation fast and quick. Egyptian engineers did have to compute all shapes and sides all the time. All they had to do was look at the chart.
Up this day these tables till exist. They may not be mathematically correct, but they certainly show how the quadratic formula began. .
How the Babylonians used the quadratic formula
The Babylonians had a different way of solving the problem. Unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonians used numbers instead of words. The Babylonians numbers were pretty much the same as the numbers we use today, except that theirs were based on a hexagesimal model (or base 60). With this system multiplication and addition were easier to do. So around 1000 BC Babylonian engineers could check whether the values of their tables were right or wrong. The Babylonians came up with a technique called “completing the square” to solve common problems with areas by 400 BC.
Euclid and Pythagoras
The first purely mathematical try to come up with a quadratic formula was done by Pythagoras in 500 BC. Euclid did the same thing in Alexandria, Egypt. Euclid used a purely geometric method. And he came up with a general formula to solve the equation. For his part Pythagoras observed that the ratios between the area of a square and the length of the sides did not add up. To him there was no other proportion except the rational. Euclid thought otherwise: If there are rational numbers, there must be irrational numbers. He then wrote a book called Elements in which he lay down the mathematics of solving quadratic equation.
But Euclid’s equation did not use the same formula that we know today. His formula could not compute the square root of any number by longhand.
How Hindu mathematicians added 0 to the equation
The Hindus are credited to have created the concept of 0, for nothingness. Western mathematicians could bring themselves to believe in the value of nothing. The Hindus, on the other hand, believed in “shunya” , meaning the void, or a state of equilibrium.
By 700 AD, a Hindu mathematician named Brahmagupta was using irrational numbers. He came up with two roots in the answer. But around 1100 AD, another Hindu math wizard, Baskhara, discovered that any positive number has two square roots.
How the quadratic equation spread to Europe
Mohammad bin Al-Khwarismi, a respected Muslim mathematician in Baghdad was able to solve the quadratic equation in 820 AD. He did not use numbers nor negative solutions. Word got around about what he did. So a Jewish mathematician named Abraham bar Hiyya brought this piece of knowledge to Barcelona, Spain in 1100.
From then on mathematicians all over Europe picked up and used the equation.
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Who Discovered Venus
Venus is the earth’s nearest neighbor. Aside taking its name from the Greek god of beauty, Venus is also known as the Evening Star. Venus can be seen in the sky before sunrise and after sunset. Venus is closer to the sun than it is to earth. The 6th largest planet in the solar system, is a rarity: It is the only planet that orbits clockwise. Venus rotates with barely 1% difference.
Earliest sightings of Venus
In ancient Hindu astrology Venus is called Shukra. Meanwhile the Babylonians had observed Venus as early 1600 BC. They called the planet Ishtar, who was the goddess of love and womanhood.
Long before the telescope was invented in the West, Venus known as the wandering star. Westerners thought the morning and late afternoon Venus were two different planets. Phythagoras was the first to know they are one and the same. He discovered that in the 6th Century BC. But he thought Venus goes around planet Earth. In the 17th century Galileo noticed that Venus had traits like the moon: Venus appeared to have lumps on either side and at times took on a crescent shape.
Venus observers
Mikhail Lomonosov, a Russian genius, first discovered Venus’ s atmosphere in 1761. Johann Schroter made further observations of the planet’s atmosphere in 1790. He figured out that when Venus appears as a crescent, its cusps stretches beyond 180 degrees. He was correct in guessing that this caused by sunlight breaking up in a dense atmosphere. Chester Smith Lyman first discovered the ring around dark side of the planet. Venus’ atmosphere is very dense. This causes a problem to scientists who want to know the planet’s rotation period. Giovanni Cassini and Johan Schroter thought Venus had a 24-hour rotation period.
Venus and Earth
Venus shares some traits with planet Earth. Like Earth, Venus has silicon rocks on its surface. That is why Venus is considered as Earth’s sister planet. Venus is like Earth in terms of size and makeup. But Venus’s atmosphere is too dense to host any life form: it is full of sulfuric acid clouds. The extreme heat of the atmosphere dries up all bodies of water. The burning temperature is caused by huge amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Venus’s surface is far hotter than Mercury’s. Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus. Venus’s atmospheric pressure is 90 times stronger than Earth’s.
Majority of Venues’ surface features are named after women.
Moreover, Venus and Earth has the same core that is made up of compact iron deposits. But Venus’ mantle is riddled with thawed out rock formations. The center of Venus is very similar to that of Earth.
Space missions to Venus
The first space probe mission to Venus was the Russian Venera 1. But Earthly contact was lost seven days after it went into space. The first spacecraft that successfully came close to Venus was America’s Mariner 2. It did so in 1962. Since then Venus has been visited by more than 20 spacecrafts.
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Who Discovered Saturn
In the same manner that Gemini and most constellations were not discovered, Saturn has no known discoverer, either. Saturn and the rest of visible and partially seen space objects have been known by man since prehistoric times. Saturn’s rings were not seen, until the telescope was invented.
On a clear night Saturn is easily visible in the sky. The ancient Greeks named planet Saturn after their god of time and agriculture. Saturn’s rings were not known until 1655. Galileo saw them first. What he saw first in fact were two humps on both sides of the planet. Christian Huygens later found out they were rings.
How Galileo and Huygens saw Saturn
Galileo set out to study Saturn quite confused. He was not sure whether Saturn was one planet in three or three planets in one. Christian Huygens picked up where he left off. He cleared up the mystery of the rings in 1655. What Galileo mistook for globes Huygens proved to be rings. They did not appear as sharp and distinct as they are seen today, but Huygens was at least correct. Huygens saw Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in 1655. Saturn’s rings were clearly understood twenty years forward when Domenico Cassini came around. He proposed that Saturn’s rings are broken in many parts.
By 1800 Saturn’s six other satellites were discovered by other unnamed astronomers.
Saturn today
More than 40 of Saturn’s moons have been named since then. But Saturn remains a lethal planet: it is 97% hydrogen, 2.5 % helium, and the rest is ammonia. For its size no one even suspect that Saturn is the least dense of all the planets in the solar system. Saturn is even lighter than water!
New space discoveries are made almost every day. Today, deep space is no longer as mysterious as it was thousands of years ago.
There is an ongoing space mission to Saturn to this day. Spacecraft Voyager has taken close-up images of Saturn and its rings. The photographs reveal the huge gaps between the rings. The gaps are called the Encke Division and Cassini Division. The latest images on Saturn’s moon, Titan, were taken by NASA’s Cassini orbiter. The pictures show that there is organic stuff found on the planet’s surface.
But unlike organic molecules found on a planet like Earth, Saturn’s Titan cannot support any life form. Titan’s temperature is below 180 C. Aside from that, there is no sign of water and oxygen, either. But experts say it is possible that Titan and Earth’s atmosphere may have been the same 4 billions years ago.
Saturn’s companion moons
In 2005 NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission took a much sharper picture of Saturn’s surface and moons. And this was what it showed: Saturn has other moons that appear like a rubble pile; frequent violent storms on the planet; and a powerful magnetosphere. Saturn’s moons are like giant corks when seen from the spacecraft.
Just when Earthlings thought they have known enough Saturn moons, another small moon was seen about 5 kilometers across. The moon was named Polydeuces, meaning “companion” or “Trojan” moon. This makes Saturn the only planet to have companion moons.
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Who Discovered Potassium
Potassium is represented by the symbol K, from the Latin word kalium. Its atomic number is 9. Potassium was first derived from potash.
It is quite easy to spot natural potassium because it is soft and silvery. It is an alkali metal that rusts fast when exposed to air and water. Potassium is found in nature as ionic salt. There is a large amount of potassium in seawater. Minerals have potassium, too.The cells in our body need Potassium to work well. Potassium is therefore found in animal and plants tissues. Potassium and sodium are the same but they have different roles in plants and animals.
The discovery of potassium
Potassium was not known even in Roman times. It got its name from potash, an English word that meant an alkali cooked in a pot from the ash of burnt wood. Potash was largely unknown then. It later turned out that potash is mainly potassium carbonate. When potassium carbonate is heated, carbonate frees itself from carbon dioxide. What remains is caustic potash. Caustic potash can burn your skin.
Sir Humphry Davy of England discovered Potassium in 1807. He did it by splitting potassium from molten potash and separating sodium from salt. Sir Humphrey Davy noted that when potassium is thrown into water, it makes a hissing sound and burns with a purple light. He later presented his discovery at a lecture.
Potassium and alkali metals
Potassium is silver white in color. It resembles Group 1 alkali metals. More than that, Potassium is more reactive than sodium. It easily combines with oxygen so it should be stored under kerosene or a hydrocarbon. Potassium ignites with water to form potassium hydroxide. Potassium also combines fast with halogens, sulfur, and other non-metallic elements.
Commercial uses of potassium
Potassium metal has few uses because it is similar to sodium. Sodium is cheaper than potassium. But potassium compounds are widely used for industrial purposes. Potassium carbonate is used for making soap and glass products. Potassium chloride is used for making fertilizers while potassium chlorate is used for making explosives, firecrackers, and matches.
The potassium used to make soap comes from lye. Water is dripped through ashes of wood for a number of hours. The liquid that gathers after that is lye. Potassium salts are dug in Germany and United States of America. 2.4 % Earth’s total weight is made up of potassium.
Health benefits of potassium
Avocados, beans, potatoes, bananas, and watermelon are rich sources of potassium. Potassium helps in buffering a potential cardiac arrest. It also lowers blood pressure, sharpens brain function, and balances body fluids. People who lose too much water through diarrhea can be relived by taking potassium-rich foods.
Potassium in other commercial products
Potassium is present in cigarette wrapping as Potassium nitrate KNO3 otherwise known as saltpeter. This substance keeps the cigarette burning as soon as it is lighted. Gunpowder and guano have considerable amounts of saltpeter in them. Matches, fireworks, and flypaper contain Potassium chromate (K2CrO4). Potassium sodium tartrate (KNaC4H4O6) is the silvery-white tinge in the back of mirrors that catches light and allows mirrors to reflect.
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Who Discovered Pi
Pi is a strange number. It is an irrational yet real number that is equal to 3.14159. According to Euclid, 3.14159 is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. No matter how many decimals you bring Pi to, it never repeats a number sequence.
Earliest calculators of Pi
Pi has been known and used for thousands of years. The ancient mathematicians of Babylon were using Pi as early as the 19th BC. Pi’s value at the time was equal to 25/8. It was pretty close to Pi’s real value by 0.5 %.
On the other hand, the ancient Egyptian scholar named Ahmes wrote the oldest value for Pi. He calculated Pi to be 256 divided by 81 or 3.160. Ahmes claimed to have found that equation in a papyrus from the Middle Kingdom.
Aryabhata was an Indian astronomer and mathematician who lived in the 5th century BC. He calculated the value of Pi as equivalent to 62832/2000, or 3.1416. He got it correct when the figure was rounded off to four decimal places. Aryabhata did not ever say he was absolutely correct. He was humble enough to say his was merely an estimate.
In the far east, a Chinese mathematician calculated the value of Pi between 3.1415927 and 3.1415926. Zu Chongzhi came up with two close estimates, 355/113 and 22/7, around the 5th century. About that time, too, Liu Hui computed ? to be 3.141014. He believed Zu Chongzhi and Aryabhata’s values did not much vary. Lui Hui said that 3.14 was a reliable and logical value.
Back in India, Madhava from Sangamagrama came up with the value of Pi when he changed the power series of Pi /4 into the equation. Then, he used the first 21 numbers of the sequence to solve for a logical estimate of Pi. He got it correct up to 11 decimal places. When he added a remainder term to the original number sequence, he was able to solve Pi correctly up to the 13th decimal places.
Two hundred years later, a Persian astronomer named Ghyath ad-din Jamshid Ksahani computed Pi correctly up the 9th digit in the base of 60. It was equivalent to 16 decimal digits.
Biblical references to Pi
It may sound far-fetched but the Bible mentions Pi. In 1 Kings 7:23, the Gospel says that the measurements for a round basin have a 30 cubit circumference and 10 cubit diameter. Rabbis would say that this computation is based on the circumference of the brim and the diameter from the outside across. When computed, the value would be close to 3.14.
Archimedes’ Experiment
Archimedes of Syracuse, Greece, is the widely recognized mathematician behind the correct value of Pi. He lived between 287-212 BC. He came up with the figure by studying the perimeters of a polygon with 96 sides, drawing a circle and being drawn by it in return. When he computed the average of the two values, he came up with 3.1419.
Pi is a very common figure in mathematics. What is strange is that it sometimes appears in an equation where it is not needed.
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