In Celebration of Pi

Today we celebrated Pi day. (March 14th - ie 3.14 - is the only math holiday.) The History/Social Studies classes get all the holidays.

With the 6th grade, we discussed my patio with a 12’ diameter and my desire to string lights around it. 

“How much wire will I need?” I asked.

After much guessing, I showed them the magic of Pi and we calculated how much wire would be required to go around the outside of the patio.

Then the students traced circles of different sizes and measured the diameter and circumference of each. When they divided the diameter into the circumference, lo and behold, they all got very close to Pi. 

The lesson? No matter how large or small a circle, the ratio of diameter to circumference will always be 3.14. We celebrated our findings with Pi cookies.

Pi - 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288... is an irrational number - a decimal that never ends and never forms a repeating pattern - any number combination can be found somewhere within it. The database we used took Pi out to the 200,000,000th place. The 7th an 8th grade searched Pi for their birthdays, phone numbers and zip codes.

Then they wrote the first 72 decimal places of Pi on construction paper and we hung them on the classroom walls. We celebrated our accomplishment with Pi cookies and actual pie.

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Pi day with my students. And next year will be ever better because we'll celebrate it on March 14, 2015 - ie 3.14.15 (see above.)