Pi Day is a holiday for math enthusiasts, who celebrate how pi is used in everyday life. The week before the celebration, students learned that pi is used for calculating circumference of a circle, and is approximately 3.14.
“Pi Day is usually celebrated on March 14th, but because that fell on a Sunday this year, we decided to celebrate on the 15th,” explained middle school math teacher Rebecca Schroeder.
As part of the celebration, students from kindergarten through eighth grade participated in indoor and outdoor activities involving circular objects, sang songs about pi, measured the circumference of circular foods, and enjoyed eating all kinds of circular foods, including, of course, pie.
“My favorite part of Pi Day was eating the food. Even though I was full, for some reason I kept eating. There were so many good choices, and it was fun to show everyone the size of my belly after the feast!” recalled seventh grader Andrew Johnson.
Students also competed in a pi digit memorization contest, and fifth grader Yi Nou Wang shocked everyone by recalling the first 109 digits of pi correctly in order.
“I memorized a story that I learned in China to remember the digits of pi. I remembered the whole story, and wrote down the numbers,” she explained as her method of memorization.
Lastly, the students participated in a poster contest with the theme “Pi Under the Sky.”
Grand prize winners, Janice Jung in the sixth grade, and Kai Higuchi in the fifth grade, creatively showed how pi is used in the real world and received a pie donated by Herman’s Bakery, a Scoops ice cream gift certificate donated by Subway Corp., and a movie pass. Twenty other prizes were also awarded to other poster winners.
“This day couldn’t have been successful without our generous donors, Herman’s Bakery and Subway Corporation.
Also, the enthusiasm of all the students and teachers who participated was contagious. We’re already looking forward to Pi Day 2011!” remarked Schroeder.
Red flag at 4 Saipan sites
(DEQ) — The Division of Environmental Quality says water samples collected from Tanapag Meeting Hall, Central Repair Shop, DPW Channel Bridge, and Hafa-Adai Drainage contained excessive concentrations of fecal indicator bacteria that exceeded the CNMI’s marine water quality standards.
DEQ has given these locations a red flag and advises the public not to fish or swim within 300 feet of these locations for the next 48 hours or until otherwise notified.
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