Happy Pi Day ~ Plus Exploring Nature with Laura Perdew

Today is 3/14, and you know what THAT means! it's PI DAY! And I've got all sorts of Pi Day activities archived on this blog - which is why I'm not writing another pi day post (though I will, in all likelihood, make a pizza. Pi day things to do here and here and here and here and here.

The other reason I'm not writing about pi (or pies) is because I'm turning my blog over to the delightful Laura Perdew for the day...... and here's Laura!

My journey to becoming an author who often writes STEM books about nature, the environment, and environmental issues seemed destined from the time I was a kid. I always loved to write, to create both fictional stories about imaginary places and reports on conservation. And I always loved to be outdoors. I was the kid with scraped-up knees and muddy shoes. I was the one who would turn over a rock just to see what was under it. And I was also the one who would run outside if I heard a flock of geese honking, just to watch them pass overhead.

Okay, that’s still me. 

And that’s what I love about my work – I get to combine my love of nature with my love of writing. Writing nature-related books is also a way for me to share this passion with young readers while simultaneously exploring and learning. I never tire of the research that goes into my books and I’m always discovering something new.  

The natural world is a complex and beautiful place. At every turn (and under every rock!) there’s something amazing, but so often these wonders get overlooked in favor of busy lives and screens. Through books I hope to immerse readers in nature and foster a sense of wonder. I want to spark curiosity. I want to bring to their attention things that deserve our awe and respect.

I also know that our planet is in trouble. It’s at this point that I find myself quoting Dr. Seuss. “Unless,” he wrote in The Lorax in 1971, “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.” Whenever I read that, I want to yell, “I care!” I want everyone to know and understand what is going on. And I want everyone to care. Because there IS room for hope. So one book at a time, I try to engage kids in the wonders of the natural world, so they know and understand it, and come to care about our planet. And maybe, just maybe, some will be inspired to make a difference. 

Thank you for joining us today, Laura.  A couple years ago I reviewed Laura's picture book series about Animal Adaptations and her book about Biodiversity for older readers. This summer she's got another picture book series coming out - this one about different biomes. I can't wait to see them! You can visit  Laura's website here.

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ a great day for Pi!

 Have some Pi!

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230....

Oh, you probably wanted some of this kind of pi!

However you slice it, today is Pi Day. March 14th. 3.14. Kinda cool, right? So many ways to celebrate:

Bake a pie. It can be berry or apple or pizza.
Compose a tune using pi. Here's how one pi-anist did it.
Write some pi-ku. They are like haiku, but focus on things with circumferences and diameters. Like pizza.
Tackle a Pi-mile challenge. That's right, get up and go outside for a 3.14 mile run. Or walk.
Create a paper Pi chain. Use slips of different colored paper for each digit, and glue links together in the order of pi.
Calculate pi of hula hoops, then hula with your hoops.

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

Bedtime Math for Pi Day!

Bedtime Math 2; This Time It's Personal

by Laura Overdeck; illustrated by Jim Paillot

ages 3-8; 96 pages

Feiwel & Friends, 2014

Laura Overdeck has released her new book full of fun and crazy math - and just in time for Pi Day! Like her earlier book, this one is full of silly questions, puzzlers, and other math fun for kids who love to ponder stuff whilst in PJ's. And like her earlier book, there are problems for wee ones, for little kids, and for big kids.

But wait - that's not all! This time Overdeck includes a BONUS level where, she says, "readers can tackle math acrobatics that require two or more steps." And this time the theme is personal, with problems that feature spaghetti, underwear, duck-duck-moose, and the ever-annoying mystery of missing socks. You might notice that there are lots of socks all over the cover. What you won't notice, unless you take your book into a dark room, is that those socks glow in the dark.

I called Laura last week and asked her some questions about her book, math and Pi. First off, she pointed out that although her book was released this week (in honor of Pi Day) there's not even a slice of a Pi problem between the covers.

Laura: Pi is a really tough concept, and is a bit above the level of most readers (up to second grade) of this book. However, today's Bedtime Math blog will feature something Pi-related. The thing with Pi, and why it's important, is that people tend to underestimate the distance around circles. Or curves - if you're ever stuck in a traffic jam on a curve, you want to be in the inside lane. So knowing that Pi is a bit more than 3 helps people estimate the distance around a circle, or how far a ball will travel in one roll.

Archimedes:You've added a BONUS problem. Anything else new with this second book?

Laura: I expanded the type of problems for wee ones, making them more concrete. Now there are problems that ask them to count objects on the page, or determine what is bigger, or figure out what comes next. I wanted to make it easier for young children to jump into doing math. At the same time, I want to make parents comfortable with sharing math with their kids. Over the past couple years I've learned that people are reluctant to change things - so in this book I wanted to make sure that if we asked kids to count something, it would be an item almost everyone would have in their home.

Archimedes: What are the Crazy Eights?

Laura: We're launching a nation-wide math club that will be available to schools for free. There are four age levels: PreK, kindergarten, grades 1-2, and grades 3-5 - and they all feature hands-on activities. The idea is to make math a fun, social activity. Click here for more info.

Thanks, Laura - and now....  Time for Pi! One of the activities Laura suggested for Pi Day is to compare the distance around two circular things. For example: how much farther does a large bike tire go in one rotation compared to a kid's bike tire? Or how much farther does a beach ball go in one roll than a soccer ball? Or if you were a lego-man, how much farther would you have to walk if you were walking along the crusty edge of a large pizza compared to a medium pizza?

And what does this have to do with Pi, anyway?

Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference (distance around) to it's diameter (distance across). Put in math language,  π = c/d. But don't take my word for it. Go on a Pi Hunt. All you need are a tape measure (or string), a ruler, a pencil and paper, a calculator and a few  round things: soup cans, the compost bucket, cheerios, m&m’s, a cocoa mug, cookies, marshmallows, cupcakes, a pizza….

Use the tape measure or string to measure the distance around your object (circumference). Now measure the diameter (the distance from one side to the other, through the middle of the circle). Divide C by d to get ... oh, perhaps you didn't get 3.14159. Not a problem – compare the circumference and diameter of another round thing. And another. Do any of them come close? If you get 3.14 you’re doing well.  Check out more Pi Day activities here and here . 

Drop by STEM Friday to see what other bloggers are writing for about science, technology, engineering and math today.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

3.14 Ways to Celebrate Pi Day

Happy Pi Day!

Not only is March 14 Pi Day, but it's also Einstein's birthday - and that calls for a real celebration. So put on some music and let's get this party started.

1 -  Make a Pi Chain
You need 10 colors of construction paper, one color for each digit. For example: red = 1, blue = 2, green = 3.... Cut the paper into strips and glue the rings together in order of Pi.
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248

2 -  A Pi-mile challenge.
After all that sitting and cutting and gluing, you need to get out and stretch your legs. Nothing better than a 3.14 mile run to get your blood moving and make you ready for some...

3 - Birthday Pi or Cake

It doesn't matter which you make, as long as you have a measuring tape large enough to go around it. Measure how big the cake is around (circumference) and divide it by how far across (diameter) to get Pi - or at least a decent approximation of it.

3.14 - Decorate Pi plates: Glue a Pi symbol onto the middle of a paper plate and color it. Then write the digits of Pi around the outside border to as high as you want to go.

Pi-in-the-sky: Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879. Figure out how old he would be if he were still alive - and convert that into Pi years (a Pi year = 3.14 years). This is part of STEM Friday. Check out more science, technology, engineering and math resources here.



 

Celebrate Pi Day

Today is an excuse to play with math. After all, it’s Pi day – or at least as close as our calendar can approximate it: 3/14. 

That's because we don't have any dates that begin 3.14159265358979323846264 and just keep going and never end. That's what pi does. If you want to see the first million digits, go here.  

Pi is a perfect number to contemplate on this blog because back in 250 BC my hero, Archimedes worked out that the value of pi is greater than 223/71 but less than 22/7. He did this by approximating the area of a circle using the area of a regular polygon inscribed within the circle and the area of a polygon within which the circle was circumscribed. He started with a hexagon and worked his way up to a 96-sided polygon, getting really close to the approximation of pi.

So – what do people do on Pi day? They make pies - all kinds: apple, cherry, blueberry or pepperoni, sausage, extra cheese. Or all of them.

They calculate pi. You can do this too - just grab a pie and measure its circumference (around the edge) in centimeters. Then divide that number by the diameter and you've got pie pi.

They might make pi-dyed T-shirts, speak pi-thon or scribble poetic lines of pi-ku. Like like haiku, it's composed with three lines: 5 syllables/ 7 syllables/ 5 syllables.

            Preheat, roll the dough

            Add sauce and cheese and garlic

            Pi are round not square

Speaking of Pie and Poetry, here’s a new book to check out. The first poem, “Edgar Allan Poe’s Apple Pie” wants to know how many cuts give 10 pieces. And though there is no pi for Poe, you might want to bake an extra pie to test your answers. Regardless of what the answer key says, you can indeed use four cuts for 10 pieces – if you don’t care about divvying up your pie equally.

The poems make you think about math outside the the pie tin. I particularly like “Robert Frosts’s Boxer Shorts”, inspired by “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “William Carlos Williams’s Pizza” which – like certain plums – was just too inviting to resist.

Edgar Allan Poe's Pie is by children’s poet laureate and pie-eater, J. Patrick Lewis,and illustrated by Michael Slack. It's got 14 poems, each a reimagined classic poem spiced up with math, and should be on bookstore shelves by beginning of April. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (review copy from publisher).

If you’re still up for a slice of pi - and who isn't - drop by Vi Hart’s video on why “Pi is (still) wrong”

To find out what pi sounds like, check this out.