Archimedes is a famous scientist who was born over 2000 years ago. Among his many contributions to the world was finding a way calculate the value of pi to a high level of precision. Using this method, he was able to determine that the value is between 3.1429 to 3.1408. That's pretty impressive since calculators weren't invented yet!

[size=100]Pi is denoted with the Greek symbol [math]\pi[/math]. It is the defined as the ratio between a circles circumference to it's diameter. I.E[size=150]. [math]\pi=\frac{Circumfrance}{Diameter}[/math] [/size][/size]It is a very useful number and is used to calculate the area of a circle and surface area and volume of a sphere. It is also used to measure angles in radians. Pi is used in all sorts of jobs including by scientists, engineers, programmers, mathematicians and even school teachers.

The challenge that Archimedes faced was that there wasn't a way to directly calculate the circumference of a circle. You may think that drawing a circle and using a string to measure it's circumference would be a good solution, however that would not have been accurate enough. What he did know how to do however was to calculate the perimeter of a polygon. See if you can figure out how he used this knowledge to calculate pi. Look at the interactive circle below and see if you can also figure it out![br][br]Pssstt.. we know now that pi = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510.......

So that was the technique, but how did he actually calculate the perimeter of the polygons? Watch the below video to find out!