It’s Pi Day! Celebrate with Fun Activities

Toca Magazine picked up some fun Pi Day activities at a talk by Noelle Filippenko, founder of piZone. Check them out!

The circumference of a circle is pi times diameter.
Archimedes of Syracuse was the first person to estimate the value of pi at 3.14, and it’s sometimes called Archimedes’ Constant.
To type π
- On a Mac → <option>P
- On a laptop → 03C0<alt>X
- On a PC → <numlock><alt>227
Pi (π) is the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet
Use this mnemonic to remember the digits of pi: Wow. I made a short memorable pi string. Could you? (The number of letters in each word is a digit of pi — 3.141592653.)
“I prefer pi” is a palindrome.
Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day, March 14.

Take an empty toilet-paper roll and have kids measure the diameter of the hole — just straight across.
Cut the roll open, lay it flat, and measure the opened up circumference.
Use a calculator and multiply the diameter measurement by 3.14. Is it the same as your circumference measurement?

Build out the digits of Pi with LEGO bricks, stacking three, then 1, then 4, then 1, then 5 … as many digits as kids want to go.
Take a tennis ball can that holds three balls and predict which is larger, the height or the circumference. Take a piece of string and measure the height of the can and cut the string to the height. Now wrap the string around the circumference of the can. Does it go all the way around? Those three balls fit almost exactly stacking on top of each other, but that’s not quite 3.14.
Check out piZone for more pi-related fun.

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