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How the Notorious Number Pi Controls the Bendiness of All the Rivers in the World?
During a period in my university life, nothing seemed to be going my way, and whatever I did, something was always missing. While solving a math problem one day, I struggled to get the solution I wanted because of pi’s irrational value. I thought to myself, “If only pi (π) was a rational number, and we knew what it equaled.” Maybe life would be easier then. I don’t know; maybe when someone asked me a question, I wouldn’t have to give an incomplete or sloppy answer. Everything would be clear. Maybe people wouldn’t have to work on the weekends.
We now know more than 62.8 trillion digits of pi, yet we still do not know its absolute value, and we will never know its absolute value. In 1776 Johann Heinrich Lambert found that for every rational non-zero value of “x” in tan(x), the result was irrational. Furthermore, he stated that since tan(pi/4)=1, pi/4 is irrational. In other words, Lambert proved that regardless of what place value of pi you calculate, it will never repeat.
Let us get to the actual topic now, though. The almost intangible but somewhat understandable concept of pi has infinite unique characteristics all around us. Today, however, I will talk about a connection of pi that very few people know about; its mesmerizing relation to the formation and shape of rivers.
