The Pi Trivia Game

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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. 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)

2. One way to approximate the value of pi is to have a computer pick two random numbers, x and y, each between -1 and 1. If it does so N times, and if, for M of those times x^2 + y^2 < 1, then pi is approximately equal to 4*M/N (presumably becoming more accurate as N increases). This method of approximation is an example of:

the Windelius algorithm
squaring the circle
the Monte Carlo method
guessing
calculation of an infinite series

3. Who, in 1882, proved the transcendence of pi?

Werner Heisenberg
Mark Dettinger
Richard Feynman
Abraham Lincoln
Ferdinand Lindemann

4. If you pick any two integers at random, what is that probability that they will be relatively prime? ("relatively prime" means that the two numbers share no divisors except 1)

pi/2
pi/3
1/pi
6/(pi^2)
pi^2/9

5. For a given value of N: if you add up the first N decimals of pi (excluding the initial 3), the sum is 666 (not to imply that pi is at all satanic). What is the value of N?

144
169
148
123
121

eve@eveandersson.com