Square Root Day!

Math geeks, the day you have been waiting for is here! So you can party like it is 3/3/09! Today is Square Root Day, 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. "These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day--and poof--they're gone," Ron Gordon, a Redwood City, Calif., teacher who organized a contest intended to publicize the event, told the Associated Press. The prize, or course, is $339.

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. 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. But I want to warn the math buffs not to blow it our too much today, since Pi day is just around the corner (3/14)!