Birthday Pi

Time: 10 minutes

What you need:

• A laptop open to the My Pi Day website

• Highlighters

• A printer

• Paper

  
  

What you do:

1. Print out the first one million digits of Pi.

2. Take your laptop and go to the My Pi Day website.

3. Enter your birthday into the website to see where it appears in Pi.

   Tip: Try entering your birthday into the website in different ways to see when it appears the soonest. You can also try shortening your birth year to just two digits to see if that changes anything.

4. Take the printed digits of Pi and highlight where you find your birthday.

Questions to ask:

1. How far into Pi did your birthday appear?

What's the science:

Even with a small font and no spaces, it takes a lot of paper to print out the first one million digits of Pi. That's because Pi is an irrational number with no end and no repeating digits. Plus, Pi is a mathematical constant, so no matter the size of the circle, the value does not change. With such a long and random number, there's a high probability that your birthday can be found within the first one million digits!