Happy Pi-Nstein Day!

Yeah, its Pi Day, but did you also know it was Einstein's birthday??? Clever was the first person who combined two words to make one new odd sounding word...like "Brangelina." ::gag:: I wanted to share with you some of my favorite things that help us celebrate and spread the word of this geek/nerd holiday!

The following video made me want to also run about town posting stickers of Pi in random places! I think we should mos def plan a group event when I move back to the Chicagoland area, because, lets face it...Oak Creek, WI isn't as cool as the high-schoolers would like you think.

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Some pi-kus, to succinctly celebrate. This was a challenge once put on by the folks over at NPR:

Hello Pi
Oh...
Endless digits

circumf'rence
o'er
diameter

March fourteenth--
Pi
Day ain't for squares

Pi are squared
gets
the area

If you dont
like
pi, youre crazy.

Three fourteen!
Here's
Pi in your eye

Hoosiers must
Round

To three point two (here's why)

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If you were to be a cheerleader for Pi:

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The History of Pi, in song form (lyrics are located in the "more info" tab):

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How does one celebrate Pi-nstein Day?? Here's how some people are celebrating:

Drasher: Isn’t it obvious? Eat Pie! Early in the morning, wake up and blow the trumpet of Pie, then Pie for breakfast, Pie for lunch, and pizza for dinner.

Jen: My fiancee and I are getting married on Pi Day this year. No cake, but we are serving pies and muffins. Toasting goblets have engraved our names and 3.1410 (for the date). Our 5th anniversary will be 3.1415. Happy Pi Day, everyone! (NEAT!)

Bonnie: The math department at our high school celebrates with all the math classes. We have a pi-walk, a bubble gum blowing contest, a pi digit competition, a jumping origami frog in to a pie plate competition. One geometry class used pi to determine if an ice cream scoop could be contained in an ice cream cone by comparing their respective volumes.

Ashley- We read “The Dragon of Pi” The kids bring a circular object to class. We take measurements of the circumference and diameter. Then divide to see if we could have saved Sir Cumference from “Dragon forever” status. It is a very fun day. It also gives us the opportunity to talk about measuring accurately and how rounding and estimation can affect our Pi approximations.

Benjamin- Our class created music video’s about pi day. The student’s were placed into groups of 4-6 people. Each group chose a song that they liked and then changed the lyrics of the song to be sung about pi! One group in particular chose the song “Bye Bye Bye” by the Backstreet Boys. The song was then sung about “Pi Pi Pi”. The students had a wonderful time and the video’s were hilarious.(Shouldn't that be NSYNC, not BSB, and I would love to see boy bands sing and dance about Pi)

Laura- at my school we have a pi day assembly in the gym. I made a pi shaped pinjata that will be broken during the assembly, we pie teachers, and have pie eating contests. (who wouldn't love hitting their teachers with pies??)

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Made for Pi Day 2008 by enthusiastic math students at Fort Vancouver High School. It's a parody of Eminem's "Lose Yourself." I wonder if he knows his rap was parodied by geeks/nerds?

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Are you a teacher? Here's some suggestions for Pi Day:

Emily- Our class made a paper chain with a different color representing each digit, and each class worked on it, and it was over 60 feet long by the end of the day!

Brionna- in class we are using the first 20 digits in pi and write a story using the numbers like 3.14 u will use a 3-letter word then a 1-letter word then a 4 letter word and keep going

Pat- Pi Bracelets (how-to)

Melanie- I’m a Middle School Math Teacher, and with my Grade 7 class, we read the stories: ‘Sir Cumference and the Knights of the Round Table”, a story about the introduction of the circle vocabulary (circumference, diameter, radius, etc.), and “Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi”, a story about the discovery of the value of Pi. They loved it! We then did an exploration activity, where students had to measure the circumference, the diameter and the radius of various circular shaped objects that they had brought from home, and find the value of the circumference divided by the diameter, and the circumference divided by the radius. They were amazed about the similarities of their answers! In all, they had a wonderful time with the storytelling and exploration activity! I’m proud to say it was a very successful period!

Mr. Kieron- At the Leadership and Entrepreneurship Public High School (LEP High) in Portland Or., we had our 2nd annual Pi Day Olympics! Events included pi memorization, pie eating (with no hands!) and a math challenge.In classes, freshmen looked at the distribution of the digits within various excerpts of pi, while sophomores created their own version of the probability experiment (circle inside a square) to determine an approximate value of pi (we got 3.08 so pretty close!).We had a great time and learned some interesting stuff about pi too!

Mark- Today (Pi Day), I received a phone call from the Frontier High School in Hamburg NY, who were celebrating Pi Day. Why? My number is 314-1592! That was a nice surprise. I am now working on a trip to the class to present what I do with math as a professional. Of course, I am a statistician in Manufacturing.

Robin- We are an 8th grade mathematics classroom in Philo, Ohio. Each year, we celebrate Pi Day by eating pies (of course), holding a contest to see who can memorize the most digits of Pi (our record is 261 digits), reading creative stories about Pi, determining if our birthdate is in the digits of Pi, and writing our own creative stories about Pi.(261?? HOLY CRAP)

Ashley- I am in the CP trigonometry class at Turkeyfoot Valley Area High School. We celebrated pi Day by bringing in different types of pies. We of course, had to tell the class what the area of our pie was, as well as the circumference! I brought in pizza (pie), and others brought in fruit-filled pies, and even a few pot pies!! It was amazing!

Jim- My Home Skills class made chocolate cream pies for Pi Day.

Simon- At SkillsTech Australia in Brisbane, I’m teaching a group of stonemasonry apprentices to make a 300millimetre diameter solid granite ball from a rough block. I used Pi Day to introduce mathematical concepts associated with diameters and circles in the theory room this morning.Together with my students, we looked at several websites featuring large rotating granite balls, and calculated surface area proportionate to the diameter. This is relevant because it would be necessary to know how long it would take to hone and polish the ball.We also calculated the mass of the ball relative to its volume and density. This is relevant because of the need to know how to safely handle, transport and install materials.Pi Day presented a good opportunity to discuss mathematical concepts in a ‘real world’ context.My Pi Day photo is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stonemasonry/2331051707/

Robert- Making a visual representation of pi. 10 colors of paper. Each digit gets a color and we link them to together in rings in the order of appearance. we’ll start in 1st period and see how far we can get by eight period. I heard there was a record from the site where I got the idea that someone created a chain that was over 2000 rings long. We’ll be hanging it from the Gymnasium ceiling.Since we are in our stats. unit now we’ll also be making frequency charts to see which digit appears most frequent.Lunch time activities toss a frizbee into a round garbag can to enter your name into a draw for your sixth period class to win a pie party after lunch.

Mr. M- My 6th grade students will be working on a cross curricular Pi activity with Humanities (just finished a unit on Greek mythology) where the students will be writing myths on the origin, creation, or the original use of Pi.

Steven- I am composing a piece of music based on the first 500 digits of Pi. 0=rest – 1=a – 2=b…the rhythm is based on the number of eighth notes 1=1 eighth note, 2=2 eighth notes or a quarter note…I will perform the piece on March 14th for the students during an assembly.

Susan- We play pi shuffleboard. I draw 3 big circles on the floor, inside of each other and the kids use rolls of masking tape as pucks. They toss and/or slide circles of tape[identifying marks on side] to see who gets closest to center. Players each have 3 circles of tape that they slide to remove others from center. The winner then challenges the next 3 players until we declare Pi shuffleboard winner.

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For those who are "knittingly" inclined: Pi beret

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Einstein! "It's Your Birthday"

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Pi Day in Congress. No, those silly politicians wouldn't go about celebrating, The Committee of Science and Technology (House), was submitted the following resolution: "Supporting the designation of Pi Day, and for other purposes." The following three things were resolved:

(1) supports the designation of a ‘Pi Day’ and its celebration around the world;

(2) recognizes the continuing importance of National Science Foundation’s math and science education programs; and

(3) encourages schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.

read all about it here

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How many digits of Pi could/would you try to calculate before you gave up? Not as many as Febrice Bellard!

"On December 31st, 2009, Fabrice Bellard set a new world record by calculating pi to an amazing 2.7 trillion digits. This is an increase of approximately 120 billion digits over the previous record, set back in August 2009.

Maybe more amazing than the 5% increase is the fact that this feat was accomplished with standard desktop pc hardware, including an Intel Core i7 CPU@2.93ghz, 6gb of ram, and a whopping 7.5 terabytes of storage.

In case you were wondering, the calculations (including verifications) took 131 days."