It's March 14, and in about ten minutes (in Utah anyway) it will be the Pi Moment at 3/14 1:59. pretty cool, huh?
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I need ideas, and FAST, for Pi Day tomorrow. I am doing a circumference-finding activity for math, buying a circular cake to cut, but what for English and social studies? It is too late to get the fabulous book "The Mathematician Who Measured the World," about Eratosthenes.
Any links or quick ideas are welcome. These are at-risk kids, and they are motivated by activity, but can't handle too much of it. It has to be a free thinking activity in a highly structured framwork.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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English - homophones seem a natural. Write a story where somebody keeps getting pi mixed up with pie!
Social studies - examine how the symbol for pi is universal - you could talk about symbols and how they work even if you don't know the language
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Oh, it's only 25 more minutes here! 3/14 1:59:26.535. I think we should celebrate the right millisecond, don't you?
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944... that's all that I have memorized...
Posts: 1466 | Registered: Jan 2003
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oh man, I had dinner with 3 math majors and no one thought of this. Instead we had 4 ingredient peanut butter cookies. Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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We had the *best* sour cream apple pie in honor of the day! Straight from the oven with a scoop of Breyer's vanilla ice cream on it... *drools just thinking about it* Posts: 1635 | Registered: Aug 2002
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This is a project a teacher was doing when I was a one to one paraprofessional in her classroom quite a few years ago. I worked with a boy who was severely learning disabled, and whose behavior was the most challenging I have dealt with.
What Ms. Klass does not recount is the sword fights the children had with the sticks they used for measuring. She does not mention that only about one out of ten kids in the class really had a clue what she was talking about. STILL, it was a very cool project. She now teaches workshops on it. Here is my favorite quote, from one of the brightest students in the class. It cracks me up:
"As for my participation in this project it was involuntary, but I am grateful for such a wonderful opportunity." - Eli
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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So, how does a computer calculate pi precisely to ridiculous numbers of digits? I mean, does it first mathematically generate a circle, then measure its dimensions, and compare them? Or what?
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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My younger brother (math teacher) asked me that around a month ago, and I'd always been a little curious about that myself, Geoff. A simple way would be to create a 2x10^n x 2x10^n grid, see how many points on the grid are within 10^n units from the center (Pythagorean theorem), then divide the total by 10^n. You'd need a pretty big square to get very many digits accurately, though, so I assume there's probably an easier way. Never tried to figure out what it might be.
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Exactly -- but I prefer to link to examples, 'specially since I never remember the series in question. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I realize it's a little late but I trust you all went Here and celebrated pi day by listening it being recited in various languages like french, cockney, cantonese, touchtone and monty python.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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