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DESCRIPTION: The pi-cent piece is a pretty coin; made of silvery-white steel alloy. The obverse has a picture of a yummy piece of apple pie (the symbol of America!) and the legends "In God We Trust" and "Pi Cents" on it. The reverse shows a radius of the coin's circle with "r" marked on it, and the
number pi itself written spiraling from outside to inside, with the numbers getting smaller and smaller until you can't see them. (The first 100 or so digits are visible).
VALUE: Aside from its face value and collector's value, the pi cent piece is grounded in functionality; a necessity when it comes to purchasing round items. Consider the pizza. Not one pizzeria that I know of accurately prices their square pizza relative to their round pizza. How can they, when the round pizza always evaluates to an irrational number of square inches? The pi cent piece would eliminate this trauma. Now, a pizza maker could charge $0.10 per square inch for a 12" pie, knowing that the final purchase price of $3.6*pi could be exactly paid.
This system of payment will never be implemented, because not just one, but a whole family of pi-denominated coins would have to be created. The pi-cent piece, now available from the U.S. mint, serves to remind us not only of the beauty of mathematics, but also of its infinite complexity.
The pi cent piece is a highly collectible item! Much more so than those stupid "State Quarters". There is a strict limit of 5 per caller, so order yours today!
Find additional coin designs here.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/212
[Amos Kito, Oct 05 2004, last modified Jan 31 2008]
Pi, remembered.
http://mathworld.wo...com/PiWordplay.html
[Amos Kito, Oct 05 2004]
(?) Change-minimizing coinage
http://www.nature.c...30512/030512-9.html
[n-pearson, Oct 05 2004]
Liquid currency
http://www.halfbake...a/Liquid_20Currency
Avoids the issue completely. [lubbit, Oct 05 2004]
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Annotation:
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My dad always said I had a thing for spending irrational sums of money. |
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I had an i coin collection - or perhaps I just dreamed it. |
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The gem in this is the "problem" of pricing round things relative to square. Very nice, and the spiraling number would be very cool. I think the bonemonger here are just folks who generally get irritated by pi. |
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The not-so-bright architect was taught to remember the digits of pi from the phrase: "May I have a large container of coffee?". The first building he designed collapsed because he forgot where to put the decimal point. |
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I've thought of selling pizza by the whole radian before,
but the problem I saw was what to do with the remainder
after cutting as such. For uniform-density commodities,
mass seems to work well...but, with these coins, we could
also buy ice cream by scoops of known spherical or
cylindrical radius, versus rectangular blocks! |
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Also, seems like some of the denominations dreamed up in
recent
work on minimizing average pocket change (see link)
involve
powers of e, e.g. a $.37 piece, which is roughly 1/e... |
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That one's good, cause the comma tells you where to put the decimal point. Else you might think that pi is 3.31415926... |
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you know they'd just stop selling round pizza. |
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Customer: Can I get change for a Pi cent piece? |
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you could draw one on your r-theta etch a sketch, to stretch your maths.. |
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I vote against the pi cent peice,not because it isn't original, but because it isn't functional. Unless you maybe expect people to carry around bags full of pi cent peices, and even then after tax what happens? |
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Instead you need to develop a FULL SCALE of multiples of pi in cents and dollars, as well as fractions of pi, mostly just the obvious ones like 1/2 pi, 1/4 pi, 1/6 pi, 1/8 pi etc. |
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In this way we can truely pay for pizza in an equitable manner. And wholesalers can buy pizza in bulk and still get it right. |
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This idea has already been thought of, but quashed by pizza retailers. It is the pizza retailer's code to charge us the price of a square pizza, minus a tiny little bit. The fairer "Pi cent piece" method would clearly cause disruption. |
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rhaaack! Pizzas of Eight, Pizzas of Eight! rhaaack! |
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When Kamen wanted to erect a wind turbine on North Dumpling and the state of New York objected, he seceded from the US. Though the secession has never been officially recognized, he signed a nonaggression pact with his friend, then-President George Bush, and enlisted Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's as "joint chiefs of ice cream." North Dumpling has its own flag, its own anthem, a one-ship navy, and its own currency. One bill, which Kamen carries in his wallet, is the value of pi. "You can't make change for it," he says with a grin. "It's a transcendental function." |
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[Zanzibar], nice rhyme, but try 'Dr. Johnson' as opposed to 'Doctor Johnson' |
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Wow, good catch there [modular]. Amazed that with this crowd it took 3 months to notice an incorrect 28th digit. |
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I don't think there's any point in remembering PI beyond 10 or so decimal places. After all you can generously say "keep the change". |
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I would think a Ö cent piece [(1+sqrt(5))/2 or about 1.6180] would be better. |
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I also want the phi p coin, the e p coin and the i p coin. For bank notes I want aleph-null. |
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And a Klein pocket to keep them in. |
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How do I buy a ball? I'd need a 1/3pi coin. |
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