Today's Square Root Day, Time to Get Your Groove On

Today is Square Root Day. What exactly is that you may be asking? It is 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. Whee! This alignment of the calendar will be exciting to the Math lovers out there.

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.

A little historical perspective: 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. There's more. 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.