be well-rounded….CELEBRATE PI DAY !!!!
user-friendly background:
Pi
Day: We can write March 14 as 3-14, and
3.14 is the beginning of the special number called pi. Each March 14, more and more math classes,
math clubs, and museums from coast to coast observe the day as PI DAY, a chance
to celebrate the too-often-unsung beauty and connections of math in our world,
including the number pi. (Here’s media coverage of a recent local Pi
Day event: http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/EPJA2008piday.gif)
Pi: Arguably the most famous number not an
integer, pi comes from dividing the distance around a circle by the greatest distance
across the circle: circumference divided by diameter. This quotient or ratio equals the number pi
no matter how big the circle is. Even
though this relationship has been known for thousands of years, it was only 300
years ago that the Greek letter pi (the first letter of the Greek word for
“surrounding perimeter”) was introduced. This number has a decimal representation
which never stops or repeats, although modern computers have now computed pi to
over a trillion decimal places!
resource ARTICLE I wrote
for secondary and postsecondary teachers: “Slices of Pi:
Rounding Up Ideas for Celebrating Pi Day” (fall 2004) Texas Mathematics Teacher, 51(2), 6-11.
The issue is at www.tenet.edu/tctm/downloads/TMT_Fall_04.pdf. The article was cited in the March 2005
issues of Mathematics Teacher and MAA
Focus.
pi-themed COMICS classroom activity
I wrote: “Cartoon
Corner” on p. 383 & 387 of the March 2007 issue (Vol. 12, No. 7) of Mathematics
Teaching in the Middle School
pi day RADIO
SCRIPT I wrote: At 8:58am
every March 14, listeners of NPR-station KTEP (88.5 FM) hear a special
“Pi Day” edition of the “Desert Diaries” show, which is
archived on the Centennial Museum’s website: http://museum.utep.edu/archive/math/DDpiday.htm
pi day SONGS I wrote:
• “Circle Song” (http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/circlesong.html)
helps secondary school students recall –and distinguish-- the two
most common formulas associated with circles.
Appears in Fall 2004
• “American Pi”(http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/americanpi.html)
-- presents historical highlights (and a mnemonic for the first 6 significant
figures) of the number pi, ranging from an implied value in the Bible to the
Indiana legislature’s 1897 consideration of a bill that declared pi equal
to 4 [see Arthur Hallerberg's article "Indiana's
Squared Circle" in the May 1977 Mathematics Magazine], and may be
sung to the tune of Don McLean’s #1 hit “American Pie” (that
was returned to the charts by Madonna in 2000). The Math Forum lists it (click here or here) as a
great song for "PI DAY" (3/14), as does the March 2005 issue of MAA Focus!
Varying versions have appeared in May 2000 Mathematics Teacher, March 2003 Pi
in the Sky, the 2004 Prometheus book by Posamentier
and Lehmann Pi: A Biography of the
World’s Most Mysterious Number, Sept. 2005 Journal of Irreproducible Results, and in February 2006 MAA Horizons. Check out this rockin’
rendition by Calvin Coolidge (a band of then-high schoolers
in
some fun Pi Day Songs others wrote:
facstaff.bloomu.edu/kferland/Pi_Songs/songs.html and teachpi.org/music/rap.htm
Other
Links: www.piacrossamerica.org teachpi.org www.pidye.com
illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=161 www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/pi/
mathforum.org/t2t/faq/faq.pi.html www.mathmuseum.org/piday.htm www.mathwithmrherte.com/pi_day.htm
www.avoision.com/experiments/pi10k/pi10k.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day www.mobot.org/education/megsl/pi.html
www.kathimitchell.com/pi.html mathworld.wolfram.com/Pi.html www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/lists/index.html
www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Pi_through_the_ages.html www.joyofpi.com/pilinks.html
eveander.com/trivia/ www.projectmathematics.com/storypi.htm www.mste.uiuc.edu/activity/estpi
polymer.bu.edu/java/java/montepi/montepiapplet.html www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/Archimedes/Archimedes.html
