Footsteps of pi | Phillip Tennen

Think about you’ve gotten a compass.

As a substitute of the 4 cardinal instructions, mark the compass with 10 evenly-divided indications.

Let’s play a sport collectively. You’re standing on a airplane, and in entrance of you is a ball.

I’m going to inform you a quantity. Push the ball with sufficient drive to impart a 1 meter-per-second change in velocity within the course matching the quantity’s annotation in your compass.

For instance, if I gave you the quantity 7:

Now, I’ll offer you some extra numbers. Moderately than an absolute change in course, you’ll push the already-rolling ball, adjusting its present velocity.

7, 0, 3

I’m going to present you extra numbers. Many extra.

What does the trail of the ball appear to be once I inform you 580,000 digits of pi?

Addendum

I initially created this picture in early 2020 to impress and woo my now-girlfriend, who I like.

The colours are arbitrary, and don’t have any deeper that means. I picked a easy technique to iterate colours and preferred the outcome aesthetically, so caught with it.

This picture would look totally different should you interpreted pi in a unique base. There’s nothing particular about base-10 on this context, it’s simply what I used.

Listed below are some extra irrational numbers expressed on this method: