As it is National Pie Week this week, and as Pi day is Saturday 14th March, we decided in the Maths department to celebrate Pi with pies!
Chemin and Archie Impress!
On Thursday, the year 10s (or rather those that weren’t busy at the technology tournament) had the task of calculating the number Pi. Inspired by Matt Parker, the renowned ‘Stand up Mathematician’, we started with 15 boxes of apple pies from a ‘certain local supermarket’ and decided that we would use these to complete the task. The idea involved using the fact that the circumference of any circle is equal to the diameter x pi. Perhaps the biggest problem that students had was drawing the circle in the first place using a pen, a piece of string and Harrison’s finger in the centre! The students placed the pies on the circumference and across the diameter with Bel delicately cutting the last pieces of pie to fit in with a blunt knife and a lot of guesswork. Counting the pies, we did the calculation and came to the result that pi = 3.11 – very close (and messy!)
Other year groups were also involved with Pi Dingbats, circle calculations, and then of course there was the eating of all the pies!! The star of the week has to be Archie Robinson in year 7 who could recite pi to an amazing 42 decimal places!! He was closely followed by Chemin Hong who managed 28 decimal places with only 2 wrong numbers. I contributed fully by going to Pie ‘n’ Mash on the way home for tea!
Miss Walker (Head of Maths)
