by STEM Scouts
Undoubtedly the most popular math holiday, Pi Day is celebrated every March 14th. There’s a good reason for this: the date (3/14) coincides with the first three numbers of the mathematical consonant. This unofficial holiday provides an excellent opportunity to interest youth in math by showcasing the various uses of pi and its influence on the field of mathematics. Plus, it’s a great excuse to have a little math-themed fun. We, of course, recommend you honor the day with a Pi Party—simply enjoying pie with others.
If you’re looking for more educational or engaging activities, we have a few recommendations to help you share the love of pi with others. Here are 10 different ways you can celebrate Pi Day:
- Get competitive: One of the best and simplest ways to commemorate the day is to see who can recite the most digits of pi in your classroom, family, friend group or at work. The current Guinness World Record belongs to Rajveer Meena of India to 70,000 decimal places. Think you can do better? Here are the first one million digits.
- Challenge others: If you have already memorized the first 30 digits of pi or want an easy way to learn it, try playing the Pi card game. A normal card deck will work.
- Like a NASA rocket scientist: Jet Propulsion Laboratory offers a number of educational materials, including the “Pi in the Sky Challenge” to showcase the different ways NASA uses pi.
- Build a Raspberry Pi: The folks at Wired Magazine recently built a Raspberry Pi and used it to calculate pi, which you can read about here. If you’d like to learn more about the micro-computer and if it’s right for you, you can read our post here.
- Go out for dinner: Many local restaurants and some major chains have joined in on the fun by offering deals on not only pie but pizza as well. Think you can calculate the circumference and area of these dishes using pi?
- Be active: Join, organize or casually enjoy a Pi Run, which is 3.14 miles long (slightly more than a 5K).
- Write a Pi-ku: Familiar with the short-form Japanese poetry, haiku? Instead of following its 5-7-5 syllable structure, write one using a 3-1-4 structure. For example:
- The STEM Scouts Way
- Fundraise: Whether eating or throwing them, pies are meant to wind up caked on your face. Try organizing a pie-eating contest or auction off the opportunity to throw a pie at yourself or another willing person.
- Learn more about pi: We put together a playlist of some of our favorite pi videos on YouTube that you can watch with your classroom, kids or friends!
- Explore the internet: There are even more activities and ways to celebrate this fantastic holiday! Here are some of our favorite resources: TeachPi.org, Wolfram MathWorld, and TeachersFirst’s Pi Day.
Do you have special ways you celebrate? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to see all the fun you have, so share a photo and tag STEM Scouts on social media if you enjoy one of these ideas!