Pi and Bouncing Pigs

Abstract: Let's do a thought experiment. We strap two pigs to two skateboards. We then push pig A towards pig B on a friction-less, 1-dimensional track with an elastic wall on one end and it stretches infinitely on the other end. We count the number of elastic collisions among the pigs and the wall. As we vary the weights of the two pigs, the number of collisions turns out to be connected to the irrational number pi! In this talk we will study this simple dynamic system with bouncing pigs and understand another way to estimate pi to any accuracy!