Hooray, Pi Day!

IRRATIONAL DAY: We spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen today, with Pi Day festivities. We've been 'celebrating' Pi Day (March 14, for 3.14159 et cetera) for a couple years now. The fun almost always involves pies of some sort. 

This morning, we set about making mini apple pies on a stick (because all food's more fun on a stick, right?).  Wielding knives, the kids peeled apples. 

Then, we flavored them up with brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and some nutmeg.

Then, we plopped 'em on lil pie crusts, stuck a stick in there, and smooshed 'em together. 

Fortunately, they baked up just fine and the kids report they are delicious. We had homemade pizza pie for dinner. 

This afternoon, we did a couple of pi experiments that we found on Exploratorium's Pi Day Activities Web page.

The first involved carefully wrapping string around the circumference of a circular object. We chose a dinner plate. The kids traced its circumference and cut the yarn.  Next, they took the string circumference and stretched it across the diameter of the plate. The goal was to cut as many “string diameters” they could get from their “string circumference.”  In news that won't surprise pi fans, they each got three complete diameters, and just a smidgen (say about .14 of a diameter) left over. We talked about the math a little bit. I reminded them that if they knew the radius of their plates, they could figure out its circumference. So we measured the 10-inch across plates, and found the radius to be 5. You take 2*pi*r(adius), and you'll get the circumference - and it worked.  The plate had a radius of 5, and using the formula, we came up with a circumference of 31.42, and that's just about what the sum of their yarn pieces was. Yay, math! We did a second task involving pi - and this time their circumference of the kids' heads. Today I learned that hat sizes typically range between 6 and 8, which I knew, but what I didn't know until now was that those sizes come from taking the circumference of a person's head and dividing it by pi. Wow!  The average adult's head ranges between 21 and 25 inches (per Exploratorium).  CJ and Annabelle took turns measuring each other.  CJ's head was 24 inches. Dividing that by 3.14159 gives him a hat size of 7.64, so a 7 5/8 would be just right for him.   Annabelle's head was 21.5. Dividing that by pi gave her 6.8, so a 6 3/4 would likely work for her.  And last but not least, the kids came up with a little song for Pi Day. It just so happens they've been working on learning "American Pie" on their guitars for the last week, so I suggested they come up with a different kind of Pi song. They watched the BrainPOP video about pi to get some ideas for lyrics, and then spent about an hour writing, refining and practicing.  Here are the lyrics A long, long, time ago, on a continent far away, ancient Egyptians did some math around 1700 B.C.E, they calculated pi to be "256 over 81" - on the right path But in 300 B.C.E There was this guy Archimedes "3 and one seventh's" what he said He was close, but now he's long dead But in 263 C.E Chinese Liu Hui calculated to 3 decimal places for you and me And now, we have, our pi [Chorus] So we were singing, "My, my, this irrational pi, 3.14159 and on towards the sky I could say more but I'm too tired to try why you have to be so big, pi? why you have to be so big, pi? INSPIRED: This morning started off rainy, but by midday, it was downright gorgeous.  A photo I'd happen to have seen on a Ballard news blog prompted me to take the kids to the Ballard Locks for our stroll. From the Seattle Municipal Archives, this photo from the 1930s shows the old railroad bridge between Magnolia and Ballard.  It was taken from the Magnolia end, and that's where we started our journey.  We walked around under the bridge for a bit ... as well as just west of it, where we had a lovely view out to Puget Sound. We walked our way to the fish ladder and made our way across the top of the dam to the locks, where pleasure craft and big working boats go through. The Viking Storm made its way to open waters as we watched. On the Ballard side of the locks, we strolled through the lovely gardens. There's not much blooming yet, but soon, very soon! The kids were itching to roll down the terraced hillside (it's much steeper than it looks in this photo). I gave them a go ahead, but told them I wasn't responsible if they hit any goose droppings along the way (there were dozens of Canada geese in the park, wishing we would go away). Below, CJ makes a beeline for a bunch of 'em. Annabelle followed soon after. They changed their clothes when we got home. :) Crossing back to the south side, we noted swirly shadows the wave sculptures were casting.  LIVE, FROM LEO:  Early this evening, we watched a two-hour program on the National Geographic Channel, "Live From Space."  We have seen hundreds of hours of NASA TV, including lots of live broadcasts from the ISS, but this show was worth watching. It was nicely produced, especially for ISS 'newbies." There was lots of great footage from on board the station, explaining its parts and, of course, sharing its breathtaking vantage point of the Earth. We learned about the station's systems (recycling, sanitation, laundry, crew quarters, and more).  There was a segment about Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's scary spacewalk, when his helmet started filling with water. Poor guy darn near drowned. And what's really disconcerting is they're still not sure why his helmet started filling with water.  The broadcast featured several live interviews with Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata. Five years ago he was the first Japanese astronaut aboard the ISS and right now, he's the first Japanese commander of the ISS.                                                            Photo: NASA/JSC During the show, I tried to access the interactive Web site livefromspace.com, but it was having trouble loading. I'd like to think that was because so many people are interested. Apparently #LiveFromSpace was the number one trend on Twitter during the broadcast. If that's the case, mission accomplished. I'm glad NASA and the other space agencies are making efforts to reach a broader audience.