14 March 2009

14 March - Pi Day

Pi Day as in π = 3.1415926535... Pi is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diametre. Since computers have come into being, pi has been calculated to over a trillion digits past the decimal and it is an irrational number that will keep going into infinity without repeating. (Makes my head hurt just to think about it!)

Math enthusiasts and school children around the world celebrate pi day on the third month, fourteenth day: 3/14, as those are the first three digits of pi. The first celebration was held in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Congress has even passed a resolution recognizing today officially as Pi Day.

At schools kids often bring in food that somehow relates to pi: pies, pizzas, cakes in the shape of the symbol pi π, etc. They may also do art projects incorporating pi. Teachers and students think of many creative things to celebrate the day. I believe we have been celebrating for some 18 years now.

In our family, we have three people who are good in math and at least one of them really enjoys it (that would be Abbey, DD#2 and Mike) and we have three people who enjoy and are good at cooking (that would be Abbey, DD#2 and me). As Pi Day fell on Saturday this year, we are having our own family pi celebration. Two of the cooking people are making a pie. And we have the perfect pie dish:



DD#2 and I have been discussing this. She is going to get out the pi plate and we are going to bake an apple pie.

Hope any of you who are math-y cooks are also baking some kind of pie.
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2 comments:

Cora said...

You guys are too much! A Pi plate!

Becky said...

I wasn't kidding when I said we celebrate nearly every holiday. LOL When Mike and I were first married, I was doing something for some holiday and he was quite certain that I needed children so I would have someone to appreciate all the fun. (He has managed to get used to it himself over the years.)

The Pi Plate really is cute to send to school with something in it. I originally got mine when they came out in 2005, but I noticed a few months ago that it was for sale again in the Signals catalogue.