{"id":233,"date":"2009-03-03T06:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T06:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html"},"modified":"2009-03-03T06:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T06:09:00","slug":"its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer;width: 133px;height: 133px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span>You probably would<\/span> never have thought of this yourself (I didn&#8217;t), but today is a special day: It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20090303\/ap_on_fe_st\/odd_square_root_day\">Square Root Day<\/a>. I&#8217;m surprised we didn&#8217;t get the day off.<\/p>\n<p>What makes today Square Root Day? Well, math-is-hard Barbie, it&#8217;s because today&#8217;s date is 3.3.09. And three is the square root of nine. Square Root Day &#8212; a day in which the month and day are the square roots of the last two digits of the year &#8212; only occurs nine times each century. That means it&#8217;s a big deal. That means if you don&#8217;t celebrate properly today, you&#8217;ll have to wait until April 4, 2016, to do this day right.<\/p>\n<p>Miss that one and you&#8217;re stuck until May 5, 2025. Don&#8217;t waste today.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Are you into other nerd holidays? <\/span><\/p>\n<p>If so, then you&#8217;re certainly looking forward to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pi_Day\">Pi Day<\/a> on March 14 (3.14). The best time to celebrate it is at 1:59, because true math nerds know the mathematical constant ? can be rounded to 3.14159 at five decimal places.<\/p>\n<p>You might also be anticipating the Day of Ones &#8212; November 11, 2011. On that date, we&#8217;ll note it 11.11.11. Or 11\/11\/11, depending on whether or not you&#8217;re a dot or slash person.<\/p>\n<p>Even bigger nerds will want to be aware of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mole_Day\">Mole Day<\/a>, which occurs between 6:02 am and 6:02 pm on October 23. Because you would note that date as 6:02 10\/23, which is similar to the Avogadro constant (6.02\u00d710<sup>23<\/sup>), which defines the number of number of elementary pieces (molecules, for instance) in a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mole_%28unit%29\" title=\"Mole (unit)\">mole<\/a>. And as nerds know, a mole is one of the seven base <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SI_base_unit\" title=\"SI\" class=\"mw-redirect\">SI<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SI_base_unit\"> units<\/a>, along with the <span style=\"font-style: italic\">metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin,<\/span> and <span style=\"font-style: italic\">candela<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>When I write my next novel, by the way, it will definitely feature an evil scientist named Kelvin Candela.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>OK, I apologize. That second-to-last paragraph was the boringest thing I&#8217;ve ever written. Wading through it just made me want to pull out every single strand of my hair, braid them into a rope, and use that rope to try to lasso the squirrels in my backyard&#8230;just to have something else to do.<\/p>\n<p>Please come back tomorrow. I promise not to talk about any constants &#8212; mathematical, Avogadro, or otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>To make it up to you, I will now post a photo of cute kittens.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.funny-animals.org\/2006\/09\/cute-cat.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor: pointer;width: 450px;height: 294px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.funny-animals.org\/2006\/09\/cute-cat.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You probably would never have thought of this yourself (I didn&#8217;t), but today is a special day: It&#8217;s Square Root Day. I&#8217;m surprised we didn&#8217;t get the day off. What makes today Square Root Day? Well, math-is-hard Barbie, it&#8217;s because today&#8217;s date is 3.3.09. And three is the square root of nine. Square Root Day&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>It&#039;s Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!) - O Me of Little Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It&#039;s Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!) - O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You probably would never have thought of this yourself (I didn&#8217;t), but today is a special day: It&#8217;s Square Root Day. I&#8217;m surprised we didn&#8217;t get the day off. What makes today Square Root Day? Well, math-is-hard Barbie, it&#8217;s because today&#8217;s date is 3.3.09. And three is the square root of nine. Square Root Day&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-03T06:09:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Boyett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"It's Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!) - O Me of Little Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"It's Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!) - O Me of Little Faith","og_description":"You probably would never have thought of this yourself (I didn&#8217;t), but today is a special day: It&#8217;s Square Root Day. I&#8217;m surprised we didn&#8217;t get the day off. What makes today Square Root Day? Well, math-is-hard Barbie, it&#8217;s because today&#8217;s date is 3.3.09. And three is the square root of nine. Square Root Day&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html","og_site_name":"O Me of Little Faith","article_published_time":"2009-03-03T06:09:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif"}],"author":"Jason Boyett","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html","name":"It's Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!) - O Me of Little Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif","datePublished":"2009-03-03T06:09:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-03T06:09:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.decodeunicode.org\/en\/u+221a\/data\/glyph\/196x196\/221A.gif"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/03\/its-square-root-day-happy-nerd-holiday.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"It&#8217;s Square Root Day (Happy Nerd Holiday!)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/","name":"O Me of Little Faith","description":"A blog by Jason Boyett about Doubt, Christianity, Culture &amp; Writing","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7","name":"Jason Boyett","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","caption":"Jason Boyett"},"description":"Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker, and the author of several books, including O Me of Little Faith (Zondervan), and the Pocket Guide series (Jossey-Bass). 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