Friday, March 13, 2015

Once in a Hundred Years Pi Day

Tomorrow - Saturday, March 14 - is a historic day. It's Albert Einstein's birthday for which, if he were still alive, he'd have 136 candles on his cake.

It's also Pi Day. March 14.
3.14. Get it?

But this year, Pi Day is extra special because it's 2015, which means tomorrow is 3.1415. And if you chow down on a slice of pizza at 9:26 and 53 seconds - either for breakfast or a bedtime snack - you get even more Pi: 3.141592653.

You won't see that again for another hundred years.

Celebrate Pi day! Here's How:

Have a Pi Picnic: Fill your picnic basket with Pi food. Pie, of course - apple, cherry, key lime - but there are other kinds of food that qualify. For example: pizza, pineapple, pickles, pita triangles with pinto bean dip and picante sauce, pistachios, or pierogis.

Play Pi games: like Pictionary, pitching horseshoes, pick-up sticks, or swinging at a pinata.

Run: a Pi marathon of 3.14 miles. Or 3.14 laps around the track. Unless you're still buried beneath eight feet of snow, in which case, pull out your snowshoes or skis ...

Go on a Pi hunt: Pi is tricky to find. It is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. In math language, Pi = c/d. To find Pi, you need a tape measure, a ruler, a pencil and paper, a calculator, and lots of round things: cans, cocoa mugs, pizza.... Measure the distance around an object (circumference) and divide that by the object's diameter (distance from one side to the other through the center). If you get anywhere close to 3.14 you're doing great.


Speak a Pi language: Pirate, pig latin, or pi-thon (you can find out how to speak like a snake here).

Write in Pi-ku or Pilish. Here's an example of pi-ku:
Preheat, roll the dough
Add sauce and cheese and garlic ~
Pie are round, not square!
To learn more about writing poetry in \Plish, go here.

Compose a piece of Pi for Fano or piccolo. Here's some inspiration.

For a real challenge, memorize Pi to the first million digits.  Or at least to the first 100 because, after all, this is a once in a hundred year event.

Today is STEM Friday. Head over to the STEM Friday blog to see what other bloggers are talking about.

Happy Pi Day    ~   3.1415

7 comments:

  1. Love it Sue! Thanks for the fun suggestions. I miss you- Life is so busy these days. Hope all is well.

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  2. Very cute post. My husband has decided we need to go out for pie tomorrow. Thanks for this. It's just plain fun.

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    1. we have no pie - just round cookies .... which might do in a pinch.

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  3. We celebrate Pi day at my school- the kids love engaging in the math activities, and eating pie of course! Thanks for some new ideas.

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    1. these are great fun with kids... enjoy your pie.

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  4. Very inventive! I wish I had some pie right now!

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  5. We're having a pi party today and we'll also being playing circle games - both inside and out: telephone, rock-rock, a what?, fox and geese, old Roger, and oranges and lemons - even though none of them have Pi in the name. We'll race around calculating pi for all the circular things and see how close we get - last year we got to ~3.16 not too bad. We'll eat pizza pi, and have circular snacks and sing in a round: Happiness runs in a circular motion.....

    This was all inspired by your article in Ithaca Child last year - Thank You!

    Monica BV

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