Circumference pi, is represented by the Greek letter . The first few decimal digits of the numerical value of are 3.141592653589793 ... Pi is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter : Or, equivalently, as the ratio of the circumference to twice the radius. The above formula can be rearranged to solve for the circumference: The use of the mathematical constant is ubiquitous in mathematics, engineering, and science. In "Measurement of a Circle" written circa 250 BCE, Archimedes showed that this ratio (, since he did not use the name ) was greater than 3 but less
Expansion of the universe long-haul airline flights where the distance between two points is measured based upon a great circle, rather than the straight line one might plot on a two-dimensional map of the Earth's surface. In general, such shortest-distance paths are called "geodesics". In Euclidean geometry, the geodesic is a straight line, while in non-Euclidean geometry such as on the Earth's surface, this is not the case. Indeed, even the shortest-distance great circle path is always longer than the Euclidean straight line path which passes through the interior of the Earth. The difference between the straight line path and the shortest-distance great circle