Pi Day 2022

For PI Day this year, we’re going to meet up at Emerald Park in Eugene that has a shelter we will try to use, trees and playground for the kids and room to do cool math!

2021 was a great event and got the whole neighborhood involved!

Kids activity sheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BaXytfFCWjXFcYEOes2ordNi6ceIxgmnKbAFlyI6P7A/edit?usp=sharing

Monday March 14th

4:30pm: Meet at Emerald Park a bit off of River Road in Eugene

4:45pm: Fun Run or ride around the playground or park trails… very short and mostly to get the kids wiggles out

5pm-5:30: demonstration of stations and kids go through them!

Eat some slices of pie!

Pi Day activity stations (Proposed):

Unravel pi: have pieces of card stock rolled up — have kids measure the lengths and diameter of the circles that gets made. Use a calculator to determine pi and add to the values chart!

• Buffons needle experiment (finding pi by dropping toothpicks on a paper with lines…

• Penny Wars except with Marbles. Essentially getting kids to realize mathematically how wider cylinders hold much more than ones with smaller radii. (If I can get the radii to align with Pythagorean Theorem even better, may go to Lowe’s for that.)
• Foam ball displacement: I have 3 foam balls with radius 3,4,5. Yes it’s Pythagorean theorem but we’ll just have that be an “Easter egg” for the adults. The idea is we measure the displacement(volume) from the smaller two foam balls and they equal that of the radius 5.

Rope-Radius activity: I have some ropes with various radii as well as sidewalk chalk and while a parent holds the rope in the center, the kids will hold the chalk down to create a circle. The intent is to help kids understand a circle is ‘many points from the radii’ and if they are old enough, that a radius is half the diameter and start to bring in that vocabulary of circumference as well.

Bike wheel measure: put chalk on bike wheels of various sizes and roll forward until you can make another mark on the ground to show how slightly bigger bigger tires are a lot further around!

Video from 2013 that shows various pi-related paraphernalia I had and more about why Pi is special.

Pi Day Sign up here (not required but useful)