It's Pi day. If you need an excuse to eat PIE, today is the day. March 14 is also written as 3.14 which everyone knows is PI.
I have a great PI story. During my elementary teaching days, I created a Pumpkin Lesson for Halloween. Halloween is not a good teaching day, as the students are too excited about their costumes and the candy they are going to gorge on that night...yet school goes on. In order to make the day worthwhile, I created a lesson about pumpkins. I had pumpkins for everyone in the class and every bit of the day revolved around that pumpkin. We wrote stories about the pumpkins, drew our pumpkins, named our pumpkins, we estimated weight, circumference, and diameter. When we finally opened the pumpkins we estimated the number of seeds then counted the seeds. We added, subtracted, multiplied and divided seeds. We determined the ratio of seeds to weight and size of the pumpkin. My students measured their pumpkins from every angle you can imagine. THEN one year, Larry did something different. He took his string and measured his pumpkin and said "Mrs. C the diameter is 3 and a little bit smaller than the circumference..how come? So I asked him to measure other circles in the room. He measured records, round trash cans, round crayons, the tires on my car...and it was always the same, 3 and a little bit. NOW I had a lesson...and we all learned about the mathematical constant PI. I had hoped someone would discover PI and after 5 years Larry had done it. I taught this same lesson to my university students and NONE of them discovered PI, but eleven year old Larry did.
So today is 3.14 and it's time to celebrate with a pie be it pumpkin, apple or pizza Enjoy.
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