Pi day

A collection of Pi Day tasks for students of various ages from the Exploratorium. 

This video from NOVA (5 min.) explores intriguing appearances of pi and the Fibonacci sequence outside of mathematics.  The link includes discussion questions and activities for students to complete after watching the video.

This web application explores the music of pi by enabling students to play pi as a musical sequence. Simply pick ten notes, which are then assigned to integers, and then listen to what pi sounds like. Adobe Flash player is required. Shared by Avoision, a blog about telling stories through technology. 

 Pi related lessons, activities and other ideas to help celebrate pi day with your students. Shared by TeachPi.org. 

Pre-K and K  ball-and-hoops related activities for children to explore math and science topics as well as strengthen their physical development skills.

Buffon's Needle is one of the oldest problems in the field of geometrical probability. First stated in 1777, it involves dropping a needle on a lined sheet of paper and determining the probability of the needle crossing one of the lines on the page. The remarkable result is that the probability is directly related to the value of pi. This pages will present an analytical solution to the problem along with a JavaScript applet for simulating the needle drop in the simplest case scenario in which the length of the needle is the same as the distance between the lines. Shared by the Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education at the University of Illinois.

Challenge your students to write a "Pi-ku"…about pi! From Scholastic.

This video uses darts to estimate pi and explores some of the challenges of using randomness to calculate pi. Shared by PBS Learning Media.

Students from The Green School in East Williamsburg (Brooklyn) combine mathematics and art to VISUALIZE pi as a mural in their community! Check out the photos.

Practice with formulas for the volume of prisms, spheres, cones, cylinders, and pyramids in this interactive. In the accompanying classroom activity, students use the interactive and then do a hands-on activity in which they estimate and calculate the volume in cubic inches of a variety of geometric objects.

To get the most from this lesson, students should have had exposure to volume formulas for most or all of the following: prisms (rectangular and other), spheres, cones, cylinders, and pyramids. They should also have experience calculating the area of a circle.  Shared by PBS Learning Media.

Celebrate fractal geometry on Pi Day by playing this game with your math students. Shared by the Department of Math and Statistics at Boston University.

Discover how the circumference of a circle is related to its radius (hint: the number pi is involved) with this interactive video from the School Yourself Geometry series.