Friday March 14 was Pi Day (3.14). What better excuse is there
to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π? On Monday before Pi
Day, 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
pre-pandemic past.
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| Estimating how far wheel will roll after 1.5 revolutions |
While the eight graders took the contest the seventh did the
Pi activities and then the groups switched. While enjoying pizza donated by the
Somerville Math Fund, the students from the students from the Healey School, the
East Somerville Community School, and the West Somerville Neighborhood 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 one and a half 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.
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| Making Pi Day Buttons |
Even though the Somerville Math Fund sponsored math night event was
canceled by the pandemic for three years, two years ago 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. So for the last two years, the
Math Club organized the Pi day celebration and repeated the event this year at
the high school for the middle school students.
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| Drawing cardioids and nephroids using straight lines |
Scott Weaver (East), Wil Jacques
(Healey) brought students and helped Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund)
organize the activities for the event. Also bringing students was Alyssa Mackey
from West. In addition, Scott Weaver at the East Somerville Community School and
Wil Jacques at Healey each organized a day of math/pi activities in all of his
classes on Pi Day. All the East and Healey middle school students enjoyed Table
Talk Pies to fuel their exploration of Pi and circles.
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| Estimating the number of candies in the jar. |
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 twenty-one
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 75,000 pies to schools and organizations celebrating Pi
Day.
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| Estimating the circumference in MM by feel |
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 will award
renewable college mathematics scholarships in May and in January they awarded
K-12 Teacher Grants. For more information, to make a donation, or to volunteer,
visit www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call
617-666-0666.
The link to this post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2025/04/celebrating-pi-day-with-math-and-pies.html
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