The Math department celebrated Pi Day on 3/14 (you may remember that pi, an irrational number, is commonly rounded to 3.14).  We started our day together in a Math Department meeting where Mary Beth shared this beautiful Pi-related prayer:

The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach. Even young children get this. The digits of pi never end and never show a pattern. They go on forever, seemingly at random—except that they can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi.


We then departed and had many varied adventures with our students to celebrate pi.  Here are some highlights:

• Amanda’s Geometry class was visited by Anne-Marie and four of her AP Calculus students.  These advanced students had recently used Calculus to find the volume of coca cola in a classic bottle.  The Geometry students were able to do the same task by using their knowledge of the volume of a cylinder (pi*r^2*height) to come up with a coarse estimate for the coca cola volume.  The Calculus students served as coaches throughout this project and at the end introduced the younger students to the idea of curve-fitting, area under a curve, and volumes of revolution to get a more sophisticated estimate.  It was a great activity to celebrate the many applications of pi in a collaborative way.  Both young and older students admitted they learned something new from each other.
  
  
  

• Cathy’s Geometry classes derived pi empirically, by measuring the circumference and radius of various circles in the classroom and inner court and working backward using the circumference formula to derive pi.  Look how close they got!

• Mary Beth not only treated the Faculty and Staff to many delicious pies, but she also encouraged the students to participate in a pi-tastic scavenger hunt.  See the tasks here.