Phi Phi Islands, Thailand: description, attractions and interesting facts. What is the number of PIs? History of discovery, secrets and riddles
After a long period of time, I continue to write about how I traveled around Thailand. Still, I want to keep in my blog the memories of my travels, not only for myself and the readers, but also for posterity. Today I will write about the islands of Pi Pi (Phi Phi, Phi-Phi Island). In a post I’ll tell you where and how I lived there, what I saw, what housing prices, etc. ... As usual, there will be a lot of photos.
Let me remind you that before that I was on. From Phuket in a large ship to Phi Phi, I probably sailed for about 2 hours.
On the way, beautiful sea views of the Krabi province opened. There are many mountains, “pieces of mountains” and rocks covered with fluffy green vegetation.
PiPi Islands consist of the two main islands Pi-Pi-Don and Pi-Pi-Lei.
Pee pee don
Phi Phi Don is a populated island. They brought me here on the ship.
Immediately all arrivals are taxed at the entrance to the island - 20 baht. The reserve is all things. Some are outraged and pass without paying. I paid, I do not mind. He went a little further. Then the "Thai Realtors" begin to pull and offer to pick up and rent a house. A lot of offers with photos, but the prices are clearly overpriced. Offers for rooms and bungalows began from 700 rubles per day. Before sailing here, I read blogs and knew that the island is small and you can quickly go around on foot and find the right accommodation for yourself. So did.
First settled in a bamboo bungalow for 600r / day. Very light, breathable and pleasant. Shower, toilet, bed - everything is ok. The only thing that didn’t suit me was the poor internet. The next day he moved to a room for 500r / day. Here the Internet is good, the shower and toilet are common, but the ass is that the house was built on anyhow and it was unbearably hot in the afternoon. Fortunately there was a balcony with tables and chairs - there I hung out when I had to sit on the Internet.
There are no pictures of housing - I think I forgot to take a picture.
There is also housing for every taste. Found prices from 300r. per day.
The infrastructure of the island is not developed. Narrow streets. No cars, no bikes. Only mechanical and electro-great. But even here, it seems to me, they are not needed. The most comfortable way to move around is "on your feet." The local police, by the way, have stories. It is ridiculous to watch them move between crowds of people at the speed of a bicycle. There is absolutely nowhere to disperse.
Map of the island:
Most of the island is occupied by the market, rallies, bars, restaurants and massage parlors. The rest are guest houses, bungalows. The main evening party and discos are held on the beach. The party here, by the way, is quite powerful. I liked it much more than on all the other islands.
View point
There are as many as 3 vivpoints. The highest point of the island is 314 m ... Up the concrete stairs. Heat and sweat. It’s good that there is a shop at the very top where you can buy some water. Got it, you drink water and admire the beautiful views from above - awesome pleasure.
By the way, they also took 20 rubles from the passage. Rip-off
In 2004, the island was covered by a tsunami. About 2,000 people died there. Another 1200 were missing. I don’t understand. How so? Really it was impossible to evacuate everyone to high points ... Well oh well. What was, was.
Beaches
As seen from a height, there are 2 bays, 2 beaches.
Not deep. The water is good, transparent, warm. But it was not always so. Often during the high tide, the water was dirty and did not want to swim.
P&P Tour and other places
When I studied Pi-Pi-Don, I wanted to see Phi Phi Lei. I bought a tour of the most popular places in the islands. I don’t remember the price (about 400 rubles). Places that I visited also began to forget, and the guidebook was lost somewhere. The tour route was something like this:
Shark Point - Monkey Beach - Bamboo island (Thailand) - Viking Cave - Maya Bay (at Phi Phi Lei)
The tour started in the morning. They sailed in a boat to the first point, which was called Shark Point.
There was snorkeling (snorkel, mask. You swim on the surface of the water and watch the fish and the bottom.) Not impressed. There were not many fish.
Then they sailed to the island of monkeys - Monkey Beach. A small beach with clear water, tourists and many monkeys.
And so, we were landed on Bamboo island. There is very clean, clear water. There are no houses here. You can’t stay alive.
They fed, gave time to swim and sunbathe and drove to another place. There was snorkeling again, but more interesting - a bunch of fish.
Then we stopped next to the Viking Cave. Our guide was telling something, but I missed half of what he said, and did not understand half of what I said. We were not allowed inside the cave.
The next amazing place was the backwater on Pee Pee Ley. Very soft turquoise muddy water. I did not want to get out of it at all.
They bought, dived from a boat and sailed to Maya Bay.
About Pi-Pi island (the locals call it that way, despite the Russians trying to pronounce each letter and call the island of Phi Phi) it is better to tell a set of facts, rather than a coherent narrative, because there is nothing special to link there.
Pi-Pi suffered the most during the tsunami of seven years ago, but now you can’t say anything about it. Abkhazia fought with Georgia twenty years ago, and the traces of this war the closer to Georgia, the more visible, as if nothing had been done in the country over twenty years. Here, the destruction can only be remembered by reading Wikipedia or the news sites of the end of 2004. The island is in perfect condition. There is an assumption that the Abkhazians have a lot of dicks, including tourists who go to them or not (they don’t go - and it’s very good, less trouble), and Thais don’t.
Pi-Pi is a pedestrian island. Where you can’t walk through the jungle - you can go by boat (taxi boat, to the beach next to the pier - 100 baht per person). Therefore, there are no bikes here, in principle, except for those with carts that are much closer to night all over the island collecting garbage, and one bike for a policeman.
So the Thais ride the island on bicycles. On average, the speed of a bicycle repeats the speed of lounging tourists, so any benefit for a cyclist is doubtful. But on his way he rings the bell every ten meters: part! There are dozens of cyclists there, everyone has a jolly bell, it is impossible without him, so the streets are noisy and fun.
The island of Pi-Pi is very beautiful and very expensive. There was no problem for the package mattress tourists I met before leaving: I just had to catch on (or be born) in Moscow, drive in all available jobs from morning until late at night, as all Muscovites do, save half a million for a year dollars, and it will be a month to draw in Thailand. Therefore, they looked at me condescendingly, like a fool-backpacker, and they complained to each other that, well, they say, they rented a good hotel in Phuket for 2000 rubles a day, and there it was more or less, and here, at Pi- Pi, they rent a room for 3,000 rubles a day, and they like it less. It’s clear that they only went to dinner at tourist restaurants on the main street, and they cringed at the type of eateries for the locals, because, they say, how can you eat something when they bring you pizza in the restaurant, and then some chicken or duck with rice.
Generally speaking, at P-P there is nothing to do but to sleep, eat, sunbathe, swim and, so to speak, a free program. As a free program, there are a small number of purchased aunts, with a dozen disco bars on the coast where people merge in ecstasy of ecstasy, and several cafes of a mysterious orientation, in which a jamb costs 200 rubles and knocks down an adult horse. Therefore, the only entertainment on the island is water excursions to the nearest islands: scuba diving or just with a mask and fins.
The cost of Pi-Pi is compensated by its beauty. A fabulous and colorful place, I, a traveler without experience, have not yet seen in my life. But, going there, keep in mind that in many respects it, for example, is twice (!) More expensive than Bangkok.
1. The cheapest housing of a more or less decent cost at P-P (at a discount) 800 baht per day - without air conditioning and a water heater. In the area of \u200b\u200bKhaosan, at half past five in the morning I found a decent guesthouse with a ceiling fan (my dream), a water heater and air conditioning for 400 baht. And that was the most expensive room category that they had left. Rooms without air conditioning and with a shower on the floor generally cost something about two hundred baht, but tourists managed to take them more greedily than me.
2. In the laundries at P-P, everyone, as if by agreement, holds the price of 50 baht per kilogram of laundry. The first thing I saw when I got out of a taxi on Khaosan was the laundry price tag - 25 baht.
3. Street food, coconut water, necks, pancakes and other tasty and healthy trifles - an average of 50 baht versus 30.
So I can say that I ran from P-P when I realized that another day or two, and there would be nothing left of my budget at all. There would be more money - of course, there would still be more. There really is magical.
What about Pi-Pi, that of Koh Samui, and probably in other resort places at the entrance to the hotels there are ads of approximately the following content: “It is strictly forbidden to bring whores to the rooms! The fine is 500 baht. Pay the fine and drive anyone. ”
The isthmus between the two bays is the island’s bottleneck. If not for the crowd of tourists, then you can go through it in a few minutes. With Europeans staring at the sides, the trip will stretch twice or three times. But we're not in a hurry, right?
One evening I went for a walk in the direction of The Long Beach. Someone somewhere from someone heard that this is, they say, the most fucked-up beach on the whole island. He got on the stones that dotted the entire coast. Well, blasphemy, the beach itself and the beach. The same sand, only far away and a lot of stones. The beach is much better.
With The Long Beach, such a failed lift, which has become a sign, leads to the city.
To prevent a broken tree from disappearing, a Buddha was carved from it.
On this side of the island, the sunset turned out to be unimportant, because the sun did not go to sea, as everyone loves to take pictures, but the village is beyond the mountains.
During low tide, water departs from the shore a hundred meters, or even more.
Let's add some civilization to the coastal stones.
On one of my last days at P-P, we went with Russian packs on an excursion to the nearest islands. One of them turned out to be the so-called little Pi-Pi, which even in English has two spellings, not to mention Russian pronunciations. Everyone just talked about the fact that the film “Beach” was shot on it - apparently the only merit of the island. It seems that if it was just a beautiful island in itself, without the traces of DiCaprio, then no one would even spit on it.
We, like real mattress pouches, arrived with a dozen of exactly the same boats, so the whole beach was occupied by people, everyone was teeming in the water and taking billions of dollars worth of photographs “I am in the background of the bay”.
Against this background, yeah.
But my money began to melt, like the ice from the 7/11 in a glass of rum-cola, and for economic reasons, I had to make legs with P-P in Bangkok.
It’s a paradoxical situation for Russia-Ukraine, but it’s more profitable to buy a combined ticket to Bangkok (the so-called joint ticket) in small shops, travel agencies, scattered everywhere in tourist places. The way from Pi-Pi to Bangkok looks like this: first on a large boat - to the mainland (Krabi city); then from the pier on a clunker without windows - to a hidden dick knows where the bus station; at a bus station that you wouldn’t just get on foot for, you can finally have breakfast, lunch; then by bus to Suratani, then by tuk-tuk to another bus station, where a direct night bus to Bangkok is finally waiting. To begin with, a joint ticket costs 600 rubles with all transfers and transfers (of which 150 is a boat and 450 are buses), and at the pier, a boat ticket alone will cost three hundred. And, when you sail to the mainland, nobody but taxi drivers will take you anywhere. That is, in this case, an “independent” trip, when you do not use the services of any agencies, but you buy all the tickets separately, will cost, firstly, more expensive, and secondly, it will take so much energy that you already after a couple of transfers I don’t want anything else.
So in this way we arrived in Bangkok at five in the morning. The throat, tormented, apparently, by icy necks, was burning all the way, although I began to torment him long before it suddenly decided to rebel. Somewhere in the back of the head, smelling a blanket, air conditioning blew. The Polish woman laid out the front seat so that her legs could be extended by putting them on her ears.
However, we arrived. Taxi drivers darted around the night bus like ants, a dead May bug.
“Guys, taxis are inexpensive, where to go,” they repeated word for word for their Kiev colleagues.
In order to determine where I am and where I should go, the phone’s charge would not be enough. It was clearly not a bus station, but just some nice place, and for some reason the driver wanted to drop us all off here. Catching a tuk-tuk or waiting for a bus (which one?) At five in the morning was stupid. The taxi driver, who nevertheless obtained from me what I needed in the Khaosan region, requested two hundred, which was suspicious. Because he wouldn’t have taken it for such money to a long distance of a dear tourist who had been wound up at five in the morning, which means that Khaosan is somewhere nearby. Well fuck with him, let's go. There are cases when, in terms of time, cost and comfort, two hundred rubles to a taxi driver is the best option. At least the least cerebral.
We stopped at a traffic light. Then suddenly the taxi driver will light up:
- Ahahaha! Ahaha! Thais yesterday ... - he didn’t have enough vocabulary for the future, and he made a characteristic gesture, hitting the other side with the palm of one hand on the end of his fist. - Boom-boom! - He added and pointed to the sidewalk.
There was nothing special on the sidewalk. The kid was withdrawing money from an ATM, and the girl was waiting for him in the back seat of a motorcycle.
Boom Boom! - the taxi driver repeated with laughter and again clapped his hand on his fist.
The tragic gesture was quite straightforward, but no one had yet voiced frictions as a “boom-boom”. “Thai boxing, maybe yesterday was?” I thought. And only then, when the guy drove away, I saw in the girl’s hands a long rose wrapped in a transparent film and a huge red heart-shaped pillow with a white inscription “LOVE”. “Valentine's Day, you fucking,” guessed Stirlitz.
The Naebalovo taxi driver was uncovered after five minutes, which we drove from the bus stop to Khaosan. Seeing familiar places, but not even trying to appeal to anyone’s conscience, for some reason I extended:
- Yes, fucking, I didn’t know that it was so close ...
The taxi driver missed my words.
The search for housing was complicated by the fact that it was five in the morning and everyone was asleep. Leaving from Khaosan, I started wandering around the neighboring streets until I found myself in a quiet part of Rambutri. The most persistent drank beer in the night bar, a middle-aged European slept right on the tile with his bag under his head, taxi drivers were talking to a policeman about something, and two prostitutes were walking ahead of me, and the left one from the back made me want to get married. Slender legs, barely covered in a dress of the priest, bare back, black hair below the shoulders. I did not want to fall from a fairy tale into a harsh reality, so I, walking behind and admiring myself, preferred that it did not turn around. But she turned around.
In general, Thai women are not very beautiful. In order for someone from the street you really liked, you need to walk more than one hundred meters. But with prostitutes the opposite is true: you still have to look ugly. In short, my bride was beautiful. In her hand she held a tiny rose, like a girl herself, in a film.
“Happy Valentine's Day,” she muttered and handed me a flower.
“And you ... as well,” I answered breathlessly, but I did not accept the rose.
She took my arm, and my time stopped.
- Where are you going? she asked.
I looked like a real macho who puts women into bed with one imperious look. Women squeak and end abundantly, shaking their whole bodies. It was just the same: sandals in the sand, not worn shorts for a couple of days, a sweaty T-shirt that hung on me after global weight loss like a shroud, a hiking backpack behind me and a hunted-and-fucked look. Add to this sixteen hours on a mess and starting sore throat - well, I spilled it in my youth. However, the girl was not a timid dozen and did not collapse to fight in an orgasm in the middle of the Rambutri. Or my look was not commanding enough.
“Yes, I’m thinking where to sleep,” I answered boredly.
- So come to us! - revived the beauty.
“No,” I muttered, “thanks, of course, but ...”
“Well, for some reason,” she said, as if annoyed.
“I'm off the road, tired, dirty and fucked up.” Let's, ”I say,“ next time.
“Well then, until tomorrow,” she perked up, and threw her goodbye: “Otherwise, he could have come to us!”
I watched them go, and at that moment I wanted to bathe, rest, sleep, recover and run after them.
Pi islands
Some of the most luxurious and expensive hotels on the island Phi phi.
Choosing a hotel on the island of Phi Phi is as easy as in any other place. However, going here, you need to know which hotels stand out against the general background with their presentability, comfort and quality service. That is why the choice will be not among inexpensive economy-class hostels, but really luxurious hotel complexes, where all the guest's wishes are fulfilled immediately and at a high level.
Of course, the cost of a room in such hotels cannot be affordable for every tourist. But if there is an opportunity to treat yourself to chic, then why not? Spend some unforgettable nights in one of the comfortable hotels?
Phi Phi Island Village Beach Resort & Spa
The luxury hotel is located in an amazing and absolutely paradise place - a beach with fabulous views of the Andaman Sea. The 5-star hotel accommodates its guests in comfortable tropical bungalows with beautiful and cozy Thai-style interiors.
You can pretty much refresh yourself in the hotel restaurant, which serves fresh seafood, dishes of not only Thai, but also international cuisine. You can relax and unwind in the spa. There is also a tour desk, which book various travel and services. You can both dive with scuba diving (scuba diving) and jump from a cliff (cliff diving). One night will cost from 6 thousand baht, but for such a pleasure and more is not a pity.
Zeavola Resort
A 5-star hotel miracle in Phi Phi called “Zeavola Resort” will be able to impress guests with its luxury and natural beauty. The hotel is located on the beach, which is its private property. The rooms and villas just drowned in the green tropical jungle, which seems to make them one.
The restaurant has a great opportunity to taste Thai and European dishes. The spa offers traditional treatments and combined unusual services for everyone. For good reason, this hotel is called one of the best not only in Phi Phi, but throughout the Kingdom of Thailand. Price per night varies from 8 thousand baht or more. Although this hotel is unlikely to be suitable for tourists who want to relax economically, it is worth the money that you need to pay for all this splendor.
Holiday Inn Resort Phi Phi Island
Among all the hotels on this list, this is the most economical option. The price for one night is 4200 baht. For true romantics who find the charm of spending time on the beach, looking at sunrise or sunset, this hotel will be a real find.
The rooms are furnished in national Thai style and the view from the hotel is amazing. The hotel has several restaurants where you can taste traditional Thai cuisine, taste the freshest seafood and try international dishes. For especially romantic and lovers, there is a service to order dinner right on the seashore. The beach itself belongs to the hotel, so its guests can dive from the shore.
Phi Phi -So, there were listed three expensive hotels on the island Phi phi, for a vacation in which, indeed, you will not regret any money.
One island was not enough for us, we wanted others, smaller in size. Leaving Phuket, on the way to Indonesia, they conceived the first stop on the islands of Pi Pi, where they spent several days immersing themselves in local waters and nightlife.
Phi Phi Islands located about 50 km from Phuket and 40 from mainland Thailand, in particular, the province of Krabi, which they enter as a marine national park. Two large islands stand out as part of the island archipelago Pi Pi: Pi Pi Don (Phi Phi Don) and Pi Pi Le (Phi Phi Leh), plus several smaller islands, for example, Mosquito and Bamboo.
Pi islands
There are several versions of the origin of the name "Pi Pi" and all rely on the Malay language. The main version is considered that the name denotes mangrove plants. Other interpretations are much more beautiful and, most likely, were invented for tourists who make acidic mines after hearing about mangroves: “Is that all? Plant? And where is the legend about the beautiful princess and unrequited love? ” In Thai, “Pi” means “brother,” the islands are often called twin brothers, since from above they are similar in shape. The version that the name somehow means “ghost” is still in use, because the islands from a distance look like ghosts, especially in a trembling haze.
We live only in Pi Pi Don, where there is a small village and many hotels of varying degrees of stardom and price category. The island is called Thai Ibiza, because every evening in the local beach bars music begins to rumble and the rave lasts until the morning. In general, I wanted to see a Thai rave.
On the outskirts of Pp Dong
Of course, you can reach Pi Pi Don only by sea. We bought ferry tickets, looked for a transfer to the pier. Tickets cost us 300 baht per person. And so, on May 12, a minibus took us from our condo and drove straight to the port. Distinctive stickers with the place of disembarkation were pasted on us on the bus, tickets were issued, and on the pier we indicated where to go. The scheduled ferry departed at 8.30 and arrived at 10.15 in Pip Dong to Ton Sai Bay, it is advisable to know the name of the bay in advance, since some of them are not accessible by land and in any case you need to sail by boat. But if you are going to party, you need to land in Ton Sai.
Our ferry is very comfortable
At the pier, everyone takes a fee for visiting the National Park - 20 baht per person. For those who are too lazy to carry their suitcases, there is the opportunity to use the services of porters with carts or bicycles (the main form of transport in Pi Pi Don).
Clogged-up parking
We went to Loh Dalam Bay, where our booked hotel was. I had to go there through the village for about 15 minutes, on the way I saw many offers for the night, the most common prices are 600-700 baht per night. You can find beds and cheaper. Most of the village is a market interspersed with food, drink places, dive centers and travel agencies, where you can choose any tours or buy tickets from Pee Pee wherever you like, for example, to Phuket, Krabi, Penang, Khao Lak, Langkawi, Kuala Lumpur. Food prices here are about twice as high, even in 7/11 stores.
The most pleasant view of the residential part of Pi Pi Don
The hotel turned out to be of a bungalow type in a beautiful and calm place, without thinking twice extended our stay for another night, immediately bought tickets for the ferry to Krabi (250 baht per person) at the reception and went to explore the surroundings. We did not read any special information about the island, we knew that there is a village, a mosque, a school, a view point and a tsunami memorial (in 2004 the islands were badly damaged by the waves, the village was literally washed away, about 2,000 people died).
Our bungalow on the left
On the threshold of the house we were waiting for a cat with a brood of kittens. They gathered here every morning
Future panther
We chose a view point, it seemed to be near our hotel, however, somehow we didn’t go along the tourist road. I had to go five kilometers uphill in the heat.
Our way to view point
In one place, there were a bunch of forks showing the viewpoints 1, 2, and 3. Having lost a little bit, bumping into a bar, we still went somewhere. From this something a gorgeous view of the whole island opened, from here you can also go down to the Long Beach (Had Yao). While resting and admiring nature, sober-minded people began to draw in here, apparently, our path followed.
Pee Pee Don View
Still wandering around, we stumbled upon a human viewpoint, where it was possible to sit on stones. A pedestrian road leads here, many times shorter than our bypass, but with a paid entrance, it seems to be 40 baht. They charge a fee somewhere below and this booth was noticed when they were going down a short but steep staircase.
Human view point with a big sign.
Here you can sit somehow on the rocks and watch the sunrises and sunsets.
The view of the island is better from here.
From here you can better see Lena and the island of Pi Pi Le
After the viewpoint, the bungalow was a little darkened, I was very pleased with the view.
Then in the hotel bar ... wifi was well caught there, especially on the antenna in my right hand
On the shore near the hotel, they watched the rain on the other side of the island, because of it part of the mountains became like a giant tortoise
There are a lot of stones on the shore, according to their rings you can determine how old they are))
In general, they were waiting for the sunset
Broken boat on a party beach
The clouds look like some kind of fashionable trololo face ... or what is it called ?!
While wandering around, we noticed that the number of young people and for some reason most of all guys prevailed in Pi Pi Don. It is full of bars, pubs and pizzerias, and with the onset of darkness they start selling alcoholic buckets. Dangerous thing ... with beer!
Alcohol buckets are already on sale
The bucket is ready
After a picturesque sunset on the beach, inviting revelers into bars begins, music rattles everywhere, fire shows sparkle. If you wander, you can choose the music you like. We found “Stones Bar”, where we played breakz, dubstep and drum’n’bass, and there were some fresh songs. Here and settled on special sunbeds.
There are many lingams
Fireworkers at work
The largest congestion was noticed at the bar where techno was playing.
Since hanging out until the morning was not part of our plans, in view of the plan for the next day, we went to bed early. At the hotel, it turned out to be heard musical porridge coming from the beach. At the reception in the morning we were warned about loud music, but in reality it was not so scary, she did not interfere with sleep. Drunken neighbors returning to their rooms make more noise. At about 5 in the morning it was already quiet.
The next night everything repeated on the beach, only the fire show was not so fascinating (tired, you know \u003d)). It was fun to watch the fire rope, but while I had the courage to jump, it was already turned off, but then other fiery entertainments were invented. The musical repertoire was surprisingly different, as were the DJs.
Fire rope ... daredevils drink at the expense of the establishment
Fire pyramid
Firemen did something in the water
In terms of nightlife Pi Pi Don is the most suitable place for lovers of diverse music and dancing on the beach, given that in Thailand with dance music is a complete disaster. Now for the future we know where you can have fun.
What is the number Pi we know and remember from school. It is equal to 3.1415926 and so on ... An ordinary person needs to know that this number is obtained by dividing the circumference by its diameter. But many people know that the Pi number arises in unexpected areas not only in mathematics and geometry, but also in physics. Well, if you delve into the details of the nature of this number, you will notice a lot of surprising among an infinite number of numbers. Is it possible that Pi hides the innermost secrets of the universe?
Infinite number
The number Pi itself arises in our world as the length of a circle whose diameter is equal to unity. But, despite the fact that the segment equal to Pi is completely finite for itself, the number Pi starts as 3.1415926 and goes to infinity in rows of numbers that never repeat. The first surprising fact is that this number used in geometry cannot be expressed as a fraction of integers. In other words, you cannot write it by the ratio of two numbers a / b. In addition, the number Pi is transcendental. This means that there is no such equation (polynomial) with integer coefficients whose solution would be Pi.
The fact that the Pi number is transcendental was proved in 1882 by the German mathematician von Lindeman. This proof was the answer to the question of whether it is possible to draw a square with a compass and a ruler, whose area is equal to the area of \u200b\u200ba given circle. This task is known as the search for the quadrature of the circle, which worried mankind since ancient times. It seemed that this problem has a simple solution and is about to be revealed. But it was precisely the incomprehensible property of the number Pi that showed that the problem of squaring the circle of a solution does not exist.
For at least four and a half millennia, humanity has been trying to obtain an increasingly accurate value of the number Pi. For example, in the Bible in the Third Book of Kings (7:23), the number Pi is assumed to be 3.
The remarkable value of Pi can be found in the pyramids of Giza: the ratio of the perimeter and height of the pyramids is 22/7. This fraction gives an approximate value of Pi equal to 3.142 ... Unless, of course, the Egyptians did not set such a ratio by chance. The same value in relation to the calculation of the number Pi received in the III century BC, the great Archimedes.
In Ahmes papyrus, an ancient Egyptian textbook on mathematics dating back to 1650 BC, the Pi number is calculated as 3.160493827.
In ancient Indian texts from about the 9th century BC, the most accurate value was expressed by the number 339/108, which amounted to 3.1388 ...
After Archimedes, for almost two thousand years, people have been trying to find ways to calculate the number of Pi. Among them were both famous and unknown mathematicians. For example, the Roman architect Mark Vitruvius Pollion, the Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, the Chinese mathematician Liu Hui, the Indian sage Ariabhata, the medieval mathematician Leonardo Pisansky, known as Fibonacci, the Arab scholar Al-Khwarizmi, on whose behalf the word "algorithm" appeared. All of them and many other people were looking for the most accurate methods for calculating Pi, but until the 15th century they never received more than 10 digits after the decimal point due to the complexity of the calculations.
Finally, in 1400, the Indian mathematician Madhava of Sangamagram calculated Pi with an accuracy of 13 characters (although he made a mistake in the last two).
Number of signs
In the 17th century, Leibniz and Newton discovered an analysis of infinitesimal quantities, which made it possible to calculate Pi more progressively - through power series and integrals. Newton himself calculated 16 decimal places, but did not mention it in his books - this became known after his death. Newton claimed that he was calculating Pi solely from boredom.
At about the same time, other lesser-known mathematicians pulled themselves together, who proposed new formulas for calculating the Pi number through trigonometric functions.
For example, here's what formula the Pi astronomy professor John Machin calculated in 1706: PI / 4 \u003d 4arctg (1/5) - arctg (1/239). Using the methods of analysis, Machin deduced from this formula the number Pi with a hundred decimal places.
By the way, in the same 1706, the number Pi received the official designation in the form of a Greek letter: it was used in mathematics by William Jones, taking the first letter of the Greek word "periphery", which means "circle". The great Leonard Euler, born in 1707, popularized this designation, now known to any student.
Before the era of computers, mathematicians worked to calculate as many characters as possible. In this regard, sometimes there were oddities. Amateur mathematician W. Shanks in 1875 calculated 707 digits of the number Pi. These seven hundred signs were immortalized on the wall of the Palace of Discoveries in Paris in 1937. However, nine years later, observational mathematicians discovered that only the first 527 characters were correctly calculated. The museum had to incur decent expenses to correct the mistake - now all the numbers are correct.
When computers appeared, the number of digits of Pi began to be calculated in completely unimaginable orders.
One of the first ENIAC electronic computers, created in 1946, which was huge and emitted so much heat that the room warmed up to 50 degrees Celsius, calculated the first 2037 digits of the number Pi. This calculation took 70 hours from the car.
As computers improved, our knowledge of the Pi number went farther and farther to infinity. In 1958, 10 thousand digits of the number were calculated. In 1987, the Japanese calculated 10 013 395 characters. In 2011, Japanese researcher Shigeru Hondo exceeded the milestone of 10 trillion characters.
Where else can you meet Pi?
So, often our knowledge of the Pi number remains at the school level, and we know for sure that this number is irreplaceable primarily in geometry.
In addition to the formulas for the length and area of \u200b\u200ba circle, the Pi number is used in the formulas of ellipses, spheres, cones, cylinders, ellipsoids, and so on: somewhere, the formulas are simple and easy to remember, but somewhere they contain very complex integrals.
Then we can meet the Pi number in mathematical formulas, where, at first glance, the geometry is not visible. For example, the indefinite integral of 1 / (1-x ^ 2) is equal to Pi.
Pi is often used in series analysis. For example, we give a simple series that converges to the number Pi:
1/1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - .... \u003d PI / 4
Among the series, the Pi number most unexpectedly appears in the well-known Riemann zeta function. We won’t be able to talk about it in a nutshell, we’ll just say that someday Pi will help you find a formula for calculating primes.
And it’s absolutely amazing: Pi appears in two of the most beautiful “royal” formulas of mathematics - the Stirling formula (which helps to find the approximate value of the factorial and gamma function) and the Euler formula (which connects as many as five mathematical constants).
However, the most unexpected discovery was expected by mathematicians in probability theory. There is also the number Pi.
For example, the probability that two numbers are coprime is 6 / PI ^ 2.
Pi appears in the Buffon problem of throwing a needle, formulated in the 18th century: what is the likelihood that a needle thrown onto a sheet of paper will cross one of the lines. If the needle length is L, and the distance between the lines is L, and r\u003e L, then we can approximately calculate the value of the Pi number using the probability formula 2L / rPI. Just imagine - we can get Pi from random events. And by the way, Pi is present in the normal probability distribution, appears in the equation of the famous Gauss curve. Does this mean that the Pi number is even more fundamental than just the ratio of the circumference to the diameter?
We can also meet Pi in physics. Pi appears in the law of Coulomb, which describes the force of interaction between two charges, in the third law of Kepler, which shows the period of revolution of the planet around the Sun, it even occurs in the arrangement of the electronic orbitals of the hydrogen atom. And again, the most incredible thing is that the Pi number is hidden in the formula of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the fundamental law of quantum physics.
Mysteries of Pi
In the novel by Karl Sagan "Contact", which was shot on the film of the same name, aliens tell the heroine that among the signs of Pi contains a secret message from God. From a certain position, the numbers in the number cease to be random and imagine a code in which all the secrets of the Universe are recorded.
This novel actually reflects a riddle that occupies the minds of mathematicians all over the planet: is the number Pi a normal number in which the numbers are scattered at the same frequency, or is there something wrong with that number. And although scientists are inclined to the first option (but can not prove), the number Pi looks very mysterious. One Japanese somehow calculated how many times there are numbers from 0 to 9 in the first trillion signs of Pi. And I saw that the numbers 2, 4 and 8 are more common than the rest. This may be one of the hints that Pi is not quite normal, and the numbers in it are really not random.
Recall everything that we read above, and ask ourselves, what other irrational and transcendental number is so often found in the real world?
And in stock there are still oddities. For example, the sum of the first twenty digits of Pi is 20, and the sum of the first 144 digits is equal to the "number of the beast" 666.
The main character of the American series “Suspect”, Professor Finch, told students that due to the infinity of the Pi number, any combination of numbers can be found in it, from the digits of your birth date to more complex numbers. For example, at 762th position is a sequence of six nines. This position is called the Feynman point in honor of the famous physicist who noticed this interesting combination.
We also know that the Pi number contains the sequence 0123456789, but it is located on the 17 387 594 880th digit.
All this means that in the infinity of the Pi number one can find not only interesting combinations of numbers, but also the encoded text of “War and Peace”, the Bible, and even the Main Secret of the Universe, if one exists.
Speaking of the Bible. The famous mathematics popularizer Martin Gardner in 1966 stated that the millionth sign of the number Pi (at that time still unknown) would be the number 5. He explained his calculations by the fact that in the English version of the Bible, in the 3rd book, chapter 14, 16 -th verse (3-14-16) the seventh word contains five letters. A millionth figure was received eight years later. That was the number five.
Is it worth it to say after that that the number Pi is random?
