by Erica Voolich
Tuesday, March 14 is Pi Day (3.14). What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π? On the Eve of Pi Day, over 100 students, teachers, and high school Math Club members celebrated π at Somerville High School by eating pizza while spending an afternoon taking a math contest and then estimating, creating, answering questions, and ending with Table Talk pies for everyone.
The Somerville High School Math Club led by Michael Morgan organized the event. Instead of the usual math contest between Somerville’s middle schools’ math teams for the month of March, they invited the schools to come and have students take a math contest related to pi and circles written by the high schoolers and do some of the pi night activities the Somerville Math Fund has organized in the past pre-pandemic.
While enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Service, the students from the students from the Healey School, the East Somerville Community School, the West Somerville Neighborhood school and the Kennedy School went around to a variety of pi math activities set up in the Lower Cafeteria at the High School.
These activities included: predicting bicycle wheel roll distance after two revolutions, a guessing contest, π button design, π facts quiz, finding your birthday in π, drawing a cardioid or nephroid (curves from lines), and predicting circumferences in mm by feel of objects in mystery boxes.
Even though the Somerville Math Fund sponsored math night event was canceled by the pandemic for the last three years, there were Somerville High School Math Club members who commented about remembering doing some of these events when they went over to either the Healey (2019) or the East Somerville (2018) for the Pi Family math night.
Scott Weaver (East), Wil Jacques (Healey) brought students and helped Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) organize the activities for the event. Also bringing students were Annalyica Beck-Liston from East, Alyssa Mackey from West, and Veronica Santana from Kennedy.
In addition, Scott Weaver at the East Somerville Community School organized a day of math/pi activities in all of his classes on Pi Day. All of his students enjoyed Table Talk Pies to fuel their exploration of Pi and circles. Somerville had a rainy nor’easter for pi day while the rest of New England was buried in a spring snow (in some places measured in feet) and probably had to postpone their celebrations with the thousands of pies supplied by Table Talk
Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that afternoon. Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for nineteen years (2 years off for Covid). 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. Twenty-one years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the Somerville Pi night celebration, but also to many more celebrations. This year Table Talk donated about 68,000 pies to schools and organizations celebrating pi day.
A big thank you to all the Math Club volunteers and donors who made this fun, educational event possible. It takes a community to celebrate π day!
The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville, MA. They also award renewable college mathematics scholarships; applications will be due in early April. For more information, to make a donation, or to volunteer, visit www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.
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