Saturday, February 26, 2011

Sew a Circle Skirt Easy as "Pi"

There are many ways to make a circle skirt.  Some people just fold fabric in half and estimate curves.  Some use a string compass, some divide their waist circumference by 6 and cut into a square of fabric folded into quarters.  I like to use π the Greek letter pronounced "pi" (as in a slice of apple pie) which is algebra for the number 3.14 .  I never understood why pi works.  I just knew it did and never questioned it.  But at some point I had to wonder....
According to Richard Fischbeck, inventor of the Randome Shelter; an emergency shelter made up of geodesic circles that can be randomly put together in a very short period of time, "Nature does not use π (pi).  Pi is merely an approximation.  Nature always builds with whole numbers. We have H2O, not HπO.  Mr. Fischbeck further explains, "A circle is always a polygon no matter how many corners it has. It can never have infinite corners. A polygon is not smooth or continuous. It is bumpy. It is made of many many tiny angles.



Scenic Turnout Blog:  http://juliehrose.blogspot.com

Suggested reading:  Take it to the Limit.  Stevenven Strogatz on math, from basic to baffling.  



2 comments:

dick fischbeck said...

COOL. I will follow this! *_*

dick fischbeck said...

Isn't this subversive? There is a pi conspiracy, you know! Kind of like the flat earth society. Things are round.