 |
| Graphing Circumference vs Diameter of various round objects |
Tuesday, March 14 was Pi Day (3.14) What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π? Last Friday night, well over 250 students, parents, teachers, and volunteers from the high school, PTA and community, celebrated π at the Healey School by eating pizza for dinner, then spending an evening estimating, creating, collecting data, answering questions, and ending with pies for everyone.
 |
| After feeling a jar lid in the box, making an estimate of it's circumference in mm |
After enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Service (discounted by White Sport), the students from the Healey School, who were joined by students from, East Somerville, Argenziano, West Somerville and Kennedy Schools went around to a wide variety of math activities set up in the gym. These activities included: bicycle wheel roll, guessing contest, tooth pick drop (Buffon Needle problem), drawing a circle the size of a CD, mystery boxes, π button design, π facts quiz, birthday in π, circle in square vs square in circle, drawing cardioid or nephroid, drawing concentric circles by folding, drawing circles by tangents, drawing circle by right angles, graphing circumference vs diameter, predicting circumferences in mm by feel of objects in mystery boxes.
 |
| Predicting how far the bike wheel will roll in 1.5 revolutions |
|
|
|
|
|
The event was planned by Wil Jacques (Healey), Jen
Rodriguez (Healey), and Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) with
help from Scott Weaver (ESCS) and Jonathan Killian (Argenziano). Table
Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came
that night and large pies for the winners of events. Table Talk has
generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for fourteen years.
 |
| Estimating the number of objects in the jars |
When planning the first SMF π Night in 2003, the Math Fund called the
Table Talk Pi Company and explained what π day was and Table Talk
generously donated large pies for prizes and small pies for everyone.
Fourteen years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the
the Somerville Pi night celebration, but to many more celebrations. In
fact, this year Table Talk donated than 56,832 pies to schools and
organizations celebrating pi day — but most likely the pi day
celebrations were delayed all over New England thanks to the March Pi
Day Nor’easter.
 |
| Finding their birth date in Pi |
A big thank you to all the volunteers and donors who made this fun, educational evening possible. It takes a community to celebrate π day!
 |
| Making Pi Buttons |
The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville MA. In April they will be looking for applications for renewable college mathematics scholarships. For more information or to make a donation or to volunteer, www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.
 |
| Drawing a cardioid using only straight lines |
The link to this page is
http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2017/03/pizza-then-pi-and-finally-pies-what.html
©2017 Erica Dakin Voolich
Yay! Looks great!
ReplyDelete