π - Breaking Down the Magic Number
I am a big fan of math. Even at the beginning of my time in high school, I always gravitate towards math. Especially proofing a value or equation, felt like a fun game to me. I think partly, this "passion", is kinda helping me in the early career of my petrophysics journey. Petrophysic requires quite a plenty of calculation, and without at least decent math, it will be difficult to grasp the whole petrophysic knowledge.
When I was in high school, my teacher always said that pi is equal to 3.14, 22/7, or so he said (which sounds like a MAGIC number to me). At that time, when I asked, there was never a straight answer why, or how to get to that number. All I know is to get an area or circumferential length of a circle, a pi constant is needed.
I watched the youtube about the story of Calculus history. The video is about how the calculus is invented, the story behind Leibniz and Newton. In summary, what caught my mind is the concept of getting a finite number from an infinite calculation.
getting a finite number from an infinite calculation.
I start to think if a circle can be approached by an infinite number of a polygon of n-sides. As the "n" approaches infinity, then the polygon becomes a circle. With this, then I can actually estimate the value of pi by balancing the equation of the area of a polygon-n to the area of a circle.
The pi will be equal to (n/2)*sin(360/n)deg when the "n" is approaching infinity. As the result showed, at very high "n" value, the pi is started to reading the same number: 3.14159...
It is not magic after all... :)
Cheers
-AAW