The Fractal Menger Sponge and Pi

2016-04-07

[public] 418K views, 12.7K likes, 121 dislikes audio only

MegaMenger project:

http://megamenger.com/

Ed Pegg's article "Squeezing Pi from a Menger Sponge"

http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/822984

Mega Menger: Building a Menger Sponge at MIT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpmP8OJJ7W4

Watch Matt calculate pi with...

pies: /youtube/video/ZNiRzZ66YN0

a pi-endulum: /youtube/video/qYAdXm69l8g

a lot of chalk: /youtube/video/HrRMnzANHHs

CORRECTIONS:

- A comment by Starkiller Base pointed out that at the end, I need eight of the Wallis Sponges stacked in a cube. As each one is a unit side, that gives the 'radius' of 1. A single sponge is one eighth of the volume of the unit sphere.

- Jon Mound (@ChthonicJon on Twitter) first spotted that 63/64 should not have been there. I accidentally animated a slip of the tongue. Product should be: 8/9 × 24/25 × 48/49 × 80/81 × 120/121 … (Also spotted in the comments by pjrkearsley87 & hweigel528.)

- Meta-correction: SithBowman noticed I had "132" instead of "121" in the above correction. The correction has since been correctly corrected.

Sorry everyone! Two mistakes and counting. I was really pushed for time this week, which is why some animations are a bit lazy and it's so late in the week (also, so many errors).

Music by Howard Carter

Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician

Website: http://standupmaths.com/

New book: http://makeanddo4D.com/

Nerdy maths toys: http://mathsgear.co.uk/