In America people tend to put the month before the day when writing dates, making today 3.14. Well I never! (you'll be saying) If those aren't the first three digits of Pi! At one minute before two (three more Pi digits) the school kicked off its Pi Day event. Only, because the school is how it is, the celebrations started three minutes after two - but hey, who's counting?
It was a whole-school 'Math assembly'. The pre-kindergartners sang a version of 'Ten in the Bed', which ended gloriously with the Little One(s) singing - to the tune of 'Whole World in His Hands' - 'I've got the WHOLE mattress to myself!' Then the 2/3s shared some Math jokes. The surreal highlight was the 4/5s' card trick demonstration, conducted in virtual silence on a table tipped away from the audience. It had all the visual impact of a conjuring trick mimed on the radio.
The Boy's K/1 teacher explained how her class had measured the circumferences of a circle with a bit of string, then seen how many times they could measure the diameter with the same bit of string. Turns out that however big the circle, the ratio of diameter to circumference was always the same (well, almost always - but there may have been some string related variables affecting the results): three. 'And a little bit,' piped up Exile #3. She'd evidently been paying more attention than her friend the Boy, who still has no idea what a circumference is, never mind Pi.
Of course, the celebration ended with servings of pie. Neither the Girl nor the Boy eat pie. Goody! We got their slices!
Sadly, as cheaper tyres will testify, there is an even greater leaning towards 3.1 in today's classrooms which probably will account for cumulative inaccuracies in years to come: ponds too big for your garden, tyres that don't fit your car...
ReplyDeleteNicely punned. I assume that the Pre-K performance was actually "There were (approximately) Pi-squared in the bed..." If not, they missed a trick.
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