Entry No. 30 — the Columbus file — filed under: outdoor
Garden of Constants
A whimsical lawn outside OSU's Dreese Laboratories featuring ten giant, colorful ceramic and metal numbers alongside mathematical formulas embedded in the pavement.
The story
When Ohio State poured millions into expanding Dreese Laboratories in 1994, state law mandated that one percent of the budget go toward public art. Rather than dropping a generic bronze figure on the lawn, Arizona artist Barbara Grygutis built an open-air mathematical code right outside the university's computer science and electrical engineering headquarters.
Look closely at the ten monumental digits scattered across the turf, and you'll notice strict mathematical rules dictate their forms. Noncomposite numbers are finished in turquoise tile and steel. Perfect squares and perfect cubes don't stand upright—they lay flat on the ground so you look down on them. The powers of two are carved from solid granite, a direct reference to the binary digit positions that power computer code in the surrounding classrooms.
The real detail is beneath your shoes. Embedded into the plaza walkway are roughly 50 physical constants and mathematical formulas cast in bronze and chiseled into stone—including the speed of light (c), Euler's number (e), and the electric constant. These were not chosen at random by an outsider; faculty from OSU's Department of Computer Science and Engineering hand-selected the exact equations used inside their own research labs.
What it's like
Walking onto the lawn outside Dreese Laboratories, you'll find campus students lounging against the towering steel digits or climbing inside the giant zero for photo ops. The installation sits on an open campus green, so there are no tickets or entry gates, but navigating university parking on a weekday is a test of patience. Plan a trip during off-peak hours or on a weekend when campus foot traffic clears out and nearby visitor parking garages are easy to access.
The move: Challenge your date to identify the mathematical properties of the numbers (like prime numbers vs. perfect squares) while strolling through the campus green.
- 📍 OSU Campus
- 💸 Free
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Outdoors
Where: 2055 Millikin Rd, Columbus, OH 43210
Hours: Added 2026-07-21 — confirm current hours before you go.
Pair it with
- Arne Slettebak Planetarium — A two-minute walk across campus lets you trade outdoor mathematical formulas for digital sky projections inside this intimate 63-seat dome theater.
- Orton Geological Museum — Keep your OSU campus walk going by heading south to castle-like Orton Hall for a free look at dinosaur fossils, minerals, and rock collections.
- Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum — A short walk across campus pairs these giant public math sculptures with the world's largest archive of original comic strips and graphic art.
Good to know
Where is the Garden of Constants located?
It sits on the west lawn outside Dreese Laboratories at 2055 Millikin Road on the main campus of The Ohio State University.
Who designed the installation and when was it built?
Artist Barbara Grygutis designed and installed the garden in 1994 through Ohio's Percent for Art program during an expansion of Dreese Laboratories.
Why are some numbers laying down while others stand upright?
The layout reflects mathematical properties: perfect squares and cubes lay flat to be viewed from above, turquoise digits represent prime numbers, and powers of two are cut from granite to denote binary code places.
What formulas are embedded in the sidewalk?
The walkway features about 50 constants cast in bronze and stone, including the speed of light, Euler's number, and the electric constant, selected by OSU computer science and engineering faculty.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Atlas Obscura · columbusmakesart.com · arts.osu.edu · mckaylodge.com · sculpturecenter.org
last checked: 2026-07-21