Ultimate Pi Day - Thornhill School - Ultimate Pi Day

Pi Day falls on March 14^th every year and is celebrated around the world but for the first time in a century, the date of Pi Day will include the first five digits of Pi - 3/14/15.

If you want to take it even further Pi Day will have special significance at 9:26:53 on March 14^th, with the date and time representing the first 10 digits of Pi (3.141592653)

What is Pi?

Pi is the Greek letter "∏" and is the symbol used in mathematics to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter which is approximately 3.14159265359. It is commonly referred to as 3.14, hence why Pi Day is celebrated on March 14^th, or 3/14.

Pi will always be the same, no matter what the size of the circle that is why it is referred to in mathematical terms as a constant.

To celebrate the mathematical constant on March 14^th Thornhill pupils from Year 7 to 11 will be carrying out ∏ related activities and investigations.

Like to discover Pi?

Here is an investigation that you could have a go at yourself at home. Take a round object and place a piece of string from one edge of the circle to the other. The string must pass through the midpoint of the circular object (this is the diameter). Cut the string so that it is the same length of the diameter. Now take this length of string and place it around the outside of the circle (this is the circumference). See how many times you can fit this length of string around the circumference.

Try this with other round objects of different sizes and compare the results. Do you notice anything?

Pi and Pi Day related facts:

• The number ∏ (3.14159265358979323 ...) has no patterns, it never ends and it has been calculated to more than 1 trillion digits past the decimal point.

•  The first 1000000 decimal places contain: 99959 Zeros, 99758 Ones, 100026 Twos, 100229 Threes, 100230 Fours, 100359 Fives, 99548 Sixes, 99800 Sevens, 99985 Eights and 100106 Nines.

• There are no occurrences of the sequence 123456 in the first million digits but of the eight 12345s three are followed by another 5.

• March 14^th is also Albert Einstein's birthday

• If a mirror is held up to 3.14, the reflection spells “pie”.