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. What rapidly converging formula for calculation of pi was found by Machin in 1706?

pi/4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...
pi/4 = 4 * arctan (1/5) - arctan (1/239)
e^(i*pi) = -1
pi = 3 (close enough)
pi = 4 * arctan 1

2. In 1949, a digital computer was first used to calculate pi. To how many decimal places was this computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Intergrator and Computer), able to find pi (it took 70 hours)?

10,493
576
2037
8331
297,454

3. What is the volume of a sphere (3-dimensional, not a hypersphere) [r = radius]?

6(pi*r)^3
(4/3)(pi)(r^3)
([2/3]*pi*r)^3
2*pi*r
4*pi*(r^2)

4. 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)

5. In 1897 a state House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill setting pi equal to 16/(sqrt 3), which approximately equals 9.2376. In which state of the United States did this occur?

California
Indiana
Massachusetts
Florida
Canada

eve@eveandersson.com