Talk Like A Physicist

Tuesday Physics Tattoo : Pi and Phi & Questioning Pi

Anna in Sweden: Pi and Phi.

Johnny Law: Questioning Pi:

If you start questioning Pi, may be physics is not the best place for you.

Source

Update:

Paul W. sent me his Pi and Phi tattoos on his wrists.

I’m quite amazed at Anna from Sweden - I have Phi and Pi tattoos too! Only mine are on my wrists!

Funnily enough I went for a completely different angle from physics. I first got the Pi tattoo for a couple of reasons. Firstly I wanted something that I considered infinite. I didn’t really want the infinity symbol as I thought it could be mistaken for the number 8. Secondly my first two initials are P I.

After about 18 months I decided I needed something on my left wrist to balance out my tattoos. Around that time I started getting into photography and art theory. It was then that I discovered the divine proportion and so I knew I had to get Phi. I consider the divine proportion to almost be a formula for beauty, although saying that makes it sound vain!! I decided to get an uppercase Phi character purely for aesthetic reasons!

Thank you Paul for sharing.

The Golden ratio is defined as:

The Golden Ratio Phi (which is ~1.618 is considered an “aesthetically pleasing” ratio. Leonardo da Vinci believed that some bodily proportions exhibit the golden ratio and some have argued that his Mona Lisa employs the Golden Ratio in its geometric equivalents.

For the longest time, the books were published with page proportions as the Golden Ratio

Another interesting property of the Golden ratio is that it “conjugates”

1/Phi= Phi +1

The Golden ratio also shows up in a Pentagram Star, in the structure of pyramids, in music and and in Fibonacci sequences and spirals.

Both Pi and Phi are considered Universal Constants.

Finally, Phi can also be written as:

Of course, in Math, a theorem is not considered truely “proven” until somebody wears it as a tattoo.. so here it is:

Tattoo of the Golden ratio in a spiral:

Don’t forget to celebrate the Talk Like a Physicist day : March 14th (3/14) which is also the International Pi day.