Happy Square Root Day

[rdowns]

With apologies to our resident numerologist, Doctor Q, I wish you all a Happy Square Root Day.

Count on Tuesday's alignment of the calendar to add some excitement to the lives of at least a few math geeks.

Tuesday is Square Root Day, a rare holiday that occurs when the day and the month are both the square root of the last two digits of the current year. Numerically, March 3, 2009, can be expressed as 3/3/09, or mathematically as √9 = 3, or 3² = 3 × 3 = 9.

"These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day--and poof--they're gone," Ron Gordon, a Redwood City, Calif., teacher who organized a contest intended to publicize the event, told the Associated Press. The prize, or course, is $339.

Celebrants are expected to mark the occasion by cutting root vegetables into squares or preparing other foods in the shape of the square root symbol.

Square Root Day occurs only nine times in a century. The last one occurred on February 2, 2004, and the next will occur in seven years on April 4, 2016.

Square Root Day isn't the only humorous holiday celebrated in the math world.

Pi Day is observed each March 14 (3.14), while Pi Approximation Day falls on July 22 (roughly equal to 22/7). The first Pi Day was observed in 1988 by staff at the San Francisco Exploratorium, who walked around in circles.

 

[Abstract]

You just ruined Q's day.

 

[Schtumple]

Everyone stay out of Q's way

 

[fireshot91]

Uh oh! Hes going to be madddddddd......



xD. I noticed this today, when I woke up I thought that today was Pie day, Then I remembered that it was on 3/14. And then I was like...wait. HOLY SNAP! TODAY'S SQUARE ROOT DAY!!

 

[andreab35]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Haha, a ton of people were telling me that today and I was like what???
But now I know all about it and I think it's pretty cool.

 

[rdowns]

You just ruined Q's day.

Everyone stay out of Q's way

Uh oh! Hes going to be madddddddd......

I think he's boycotting the thread.

 

[calculus]

I think he's boycotting the thread.

I'm rooting for him to square up to you...

 

[fireshot91]

No Pun intended?

 

[alphaod]

You guys are weird.

 

[EV0LUTION]

My calc teacher couldn't figure out why it was called square root day, she kept trying to Sq(3*3*2009). She Did it in front of the whole class on her calculator saying very smugly "this is why today is called square root day" and ran into the epic fail of 134.465