Pi Day

I'm fairly sure that by now, everyone is well aware that today is Pi Day. Not only that, but it's Albert Einstein's birthday, which I find cosmically amusing.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, I ferried the kids over to the Science Center, where they were holding their own celebration of “Pi Day.” We spent a good five hours there, and I think I got my main point across…obviously most of this mathematical stuff is above David’s head, but what I wanted to get cemented in his brain was the word “Pi,” that it meant a number, the number is 3.14, and it has to do with circles, curves and spirals. And because we’re (re)newly-minted members, I had some free OmniMax tickets to use, so we saw one of those, too.

The Science Center had obviously had their minions go all around the building and put up little signs saying “Pi is Here.” It was the guest’s job to figure out *why* Pi was there. The first one was the curved ramp leading up to the Imax theater. The next was placed on a big “hamster wheel” they have hooked up to the Energizer machine. There were a whole cache of them stuck to the pillars supporting the building itself. I asked David why Pi was there and he looked up and down the column and then saw the base of it and said, “Because! It’s a circle there, and…and…” and he was motioning with his hands, following the curvature of the pillar up to the top. He didn’t have the words, but he sure had the idea.

Most of the Pi Day stuff was happening at the Math Cart (well…duh!), where we:

• Added links to a paper chain where each link represented a single digit of Pi.
• Thought up as many words that start with “Pi” as possible, counted the number of letters in the word, and stuck a Pi sticker onto a graph showing the cumulative results. (We came up with “pinch” and “picnic.” After we left and it was actually quiet, I could come up with several more. Sigh.)
• Made and colored Pi headbands.

There were more things to do, but they involved calculating the number of full cans of soda which had been poured into a larger cylinder, and figuring out which was really more…two small pizzas or one large one. There was also a cute little uber-nerd manning the table. Looked like he was in high school, and I was forcibly reminded of my spouse. His job was to guide the littler kids through the required Pi math to solve the problems. The Math Cart is where new engineers are groomed and where old ones retire. When we came back later on the table was staffed by a tall gentleman with a grey beard, wearing a Pi headband and a tie-dyed shirt. (I often see older men manning the Math Cart, trying to get kids to stop a tennis ball from rolling downhill using six straws and two rubber bands, or encouraging them to “think of another way you could add this four times.” They really DO care deeply, you can just tell.)

The next joy was a presentation of “Science Goes Splat,” which also involved Pi Minute. They have a large open area where an audience sits and where they’ve placed a target. They have a nice, long, 60-foot drop from the fourth floor all the way down to the lower level, which they utilize to show off their gravity. (Sure, “their” gravity. Special, unique, Science Center gravity. Didn’t you know?) So Lauren sat on my lap and my little redhead geeklet sat to the right of me, Pi headband securely in place. He wasn’t sure what they were going to do, but once they started to drop things out of the window, he perked right up. They dropped a rope with incremental measurements (intro to the Metric system) down to the presenter, and once we had the distance established, they dropped an apple (in honor of Newton, of course) 60 feet down into a plastic wading pool (dramatic intro to gravity, not to mention force and time). They dropped several balls from the windows…basketballs, a super high-bounce ball, a golf ball….asking which one would bounce the highest. They dropped balls of different sizes and the same weight, and balls of the same size and different weights. They poured water out of a pitcher while the presenter tried to “catch” it in a glass. They dropped arrows into an archery target (yes, real arrows. Sharp ones.), they dropped a baseball with a speed sensor in it, they asked for volunteers to catch things and dropped a fistful of knotted scarves (for the little kids), a squishy ball to be caught in a laundry basket (for the 10 year-olds or so) and, for the fool-hearty teenagers….well, they got to don a rain poncho and catch a water balloon. (“It splatted all over the place!” says Lauren.) At 1:59 p.m., they sounded an alarm, as this was Pi Minute, (technically, if Pi is rounded out to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making it March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m.) and they dropped the “Pi Ball.” (A big, red exercise ball with 3.1415926 written on it) The little Math Cart Nerd joined in for this one, and they did the Pi Dance, which really can’t be described, only experienced. As the Math Nerd said, “Yeah, it’s a little geeky, but that’s what we do around here.” I knew there was a reason I liked geeks.

We also went to the Discovery Room and saw a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach (think of a winged cockroach just slightly shorter than the entire back of your hand) shed its exoskeleton. Not all moms are willing to think this is cool. “I think I’d die if one so much as touched me,” said a nearby parent. Both David and Lauren were willing to pet one. And since they don’t bite (the roaches, not the kids), I was willing to let them.