Happy Pi Day
No, I didn't mean pie day. I have slightly better proof reading skills than that. I did indeed mean pi. Let me tell you a little about pi before telling you how we celebrated the day honoring it. Pi (or π ) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi is equal to 3.14159........The digits in the decimal place in pi never end. Computers have been able to figure over a million digits thus far.
Here is an example of pi at work. Say you need a table skirt for your round table and all you have with you is a ruler. Don't panic......... Pi's to the rescue.
1. Measure the diameter of the table.
2. Let's pretend you came up with the number 20. Now you would times that number by π to find the circumference of your table.
d x π = c
20 x 3.14 = 62.8
3. You now know the circumference of your table (62.8 inches) and can therefore pick out an appropriately sized table skirt. ( So don't get one that's 58 inches because it won't fit all the way around and stay away from one that's 86 inches unless you plan on cutting it to fit. )
Now on to what we did to celebrate pi day (March 14th, or 3/14) this year.
The day started off with pi shaped pancakes.
Than we changed our computer wall paper to be more pi like.
We decided to see where our birthdays fell in pi. You should do yours too, it's kind of fun. Here is the website we used or you can just search in Google for "birthday in pi". Use the numbers of your birthday minus the first two digits of the year. So if your birthday was March 16, 1966 you would use the following, 31666. To keep with this example 31666 occurs at position 5,401 in pi (not including the 3.) Here is how we ranked......
E (myself) ~ position 12,614
M (my mom) ~ position 187,622
P (my dad) ~ position 115,405
K (my oldest son) ~ position 135,473
D (my youngest son) ~ position 44,572
Than we spent some time writing pikus. (Similar to haiku) Want to write your own? Here are the basic rules:
1. Your poem must have 3 lines
2. Line one must have 3 syllables
3. Line 2 must have 1 syllable
4. Line 3 must have 4 syllables.
Now you have a Piku. The syllables in the lines are as follows, 3.14. Here are some we wrote. I'll list the author in parentheses before the poem.
(E)
When hungry
I
Eat apple pie
(M)
Baby hats.
I
sew baby hats!
(K)
I saw a
hat
who ate a bat
(D)
I'm Dante
and
I eat chocolate
(P)
Balloon fight.
Run!
Not that way, fool.
P wrote some more wonderful ones that he posted on his website. If you have time you should check them out.
By then we were getting hungry so we made pizza pi. Literally.
Sugar cookies also are a nice treat, so we made some of those too.
Than what would Pi day be with out listening to the Pi song? Or even several pi songs. Here are the two we chose to listen to.
Video 1
Video 2
Both videos open in Youtube. Enjoy!
Video 1
Video 2
Both videos open in Youtube. Enjoy!
That concluded our Pi Day!! We sure had fun.
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