Pi Day!

[falcongrrl]

I know it's geeky; I know it's overdone...but I think the kids are of an age to enjoy it. Anyone have ideas for simple problems/experiments/art/etc. for celebrating? Since it's for math-challenged me and my five and eight-year-old, simple is probably best. :-)

Comments

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

We're just going to bake, though I did try to explain the basic concept.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're baking too; I just wanted some other ideas.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it's a little bit hard to explain the concept of an irrational ratio to kids who don't even know the idea of fractions yet. :-) You *might* be able to get Daniel to understand the notion of a constant ratio if you have a couple of different-sized circles to measure: wrap a loop of string around to measure the circumference of, say, a 6-inch pot and show how it's about 19 inches around; then wrap another one around a 9-inch pot and show how it's about 28 or 28 1/2. If you have a third-sized circle, measure it one way or another (either circumference or diameter) and let him guess how the other measurement would go. (For purposes of 8-year-old approximation, pi should essentially be taken as 3 with a little fudge factor -- if you can get him to understand that 'one is always about 3 times the other' then that should offer plenty of little multiplication and division opportunities.) If you really want to push things you can try and get him to calculate either the circumference or diameter of the earth from the other measurement -- I'm pretty sure you can find clever stories about how ancients measured the circumference on the web somewhere. (This is also a pretty good explanation of how this stuff can be useful -- for instance, you want to measure how far across a basketball is (diameter) without drilling a hole through it (which would deflate it), so measure around it and divide! Then you can do the same with a basketball hoop and find out how much space there is. Etc, etc...

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

And whatever you do, of course, good luck!

[nanashi-jones.livejournal.com]

Bake a pie and when it's cooked, put some icing on it with the notations of C being the circumference, distance around the pie, and d being the diameter, distance through the pie. Then, on the diameter line, put C over d and say this all equals "Pi."

Complicated, but it's visual and that helps.

The Wikipedia article is fairly to the point, so if you're confuzzled check it out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi).

Heard on the radio:

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

"...make a haiku based around pi." contest.

The winner:
'Magnificent pi
A number that grows and grows
Round and round it goes.'