The Pi Trivia Game

by Eve Andersson

     

Home : Pi : The Pi Trivia Game

Finally this is your chance to pay tribute to the magnificent transcendental number that we have all grown to love! Here are 25 questions (given to you 5 at a time), picked randomly from my pi question database. Get ready for the thrill of your lifetime, the ultimate challenge, The Pi Trivia Game!

1. Which of the following is an arctangent formula for pi?
arctan 1
3*arctan 1/256 + 2*arctan 1/17
4/3*arctan 1
16*arctan 1/5 - 4*arctan 1/239
2*arctan 2

2. Which French mathematician said in 1909 that it is hopeless to think that we could ever check if there are 10^100 consecutive zeroes in the decimal expansion of pi?
Félix-Édouard-Justin Émile Borel
René Baire
Felix Klein while looking at his cat.
Felix Klein while looking at his cat in his bottle.
Möbius while walking on a strip of stamps.

3. Pi shows up many places in physics, including simple harmonic motion. Given a simple pendulum of length h, what is the period for a small oscillation (the period is the time it takes to complete one full oscillation)?
3c/(pi*h^2), where c is the speed of light
2*pi*sqrt(h/g), where g is the gravitational constant
e^(pi*h), where e is the base of the natural logarithm
h/pi
(27*pi^2)/(h*[g^2]*[e*c]^3)

4. Say you have a rope wrapped tightly around the earth at the equator. How much longer would you have to make the rope if you wanted the rope to be exactly 1 foot above the surface the whole way around? (assume that the earth has a constant radius at the equator)
2*pi feet
2*pi*R feet, where R is the radius of the earth
pi*R^2 feet
pi + D feet, where D is the diameter of the earth
pi/2 feet

5. For many years, it has been conjectured but unproven that pi is normal in base 10. What does normal mean?
Like any normal person, pi has two legs.
Blocks of digits of increasing size have a limit frequency of 1/10 for each of the digits (0 to 9).
Pi squared is a rational number.
People who like pi are normal.
The natural logarithm of pi taken to the tenth power is an integer.
eve@eveandersson.com