Predicting the distance a wheel will turn after 1.5 or 2.5 revolutions.

Friday, March 14, was Pi Day (3.14), so it was a perfect time for Somerville middle-schoolers to celebrate all things math.

About 350 students, parents, teachers and volunteers from the high school, PTA and community, celebrated Pi Day with Pi Night at the East Somerville Community School (ESCS) by eating pizza for dinner before spending the rest of the evening estimating, creating, collecting data and answering questions before ending with pies for everyone and pi-symbol (π) pencils for the students.

After enjoying the pizza, which was donated by the Bickoff family (discounted by White Sport), the students from East Somerville, who were joined by students from Healey, Argenziano, West Somerville, Brown and Kennedy schools, went around to a wide variety of math activities set up in the halls, foyers and auditorium. These activities included: bicycle wheel roll, guessing contest, tooth-pick drop (Buffon’s needle problem), drawing a circle the size of a CD, mystery boxes, pi-symbol button design, a pi facts quiz, birthday in pi, circle in square vs. square in circle, drawing cardiod or nephroid, drawing concentric circles by folding, drawing circles by tangents, drawing circles by right angles, reciting digits of pi, predicting how high of a pour, predicting circumferences and radii and graphing circumference vs. diameter.

The event was planned by Scott Weaver (ESCS), Wil Jacques (Healey), Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) and Lindsay Garofalo (ESCS).  Table Talk Pies of Worcester supplied small pies for all who came that night and large pies for winners of events. Table Talk has supported this Somerville Math Fund event for 11 years. Star Market/Shaw’s (Beacon Street) donated most of the juice.

Pi Night was sponsored by the Somerville Mathematics Fund. This year, East Somerville students returned to their rebuilt ESCS building after their long hiatus after the fire that had destroyed their school building.  It seemed appropriate for Pi night to also return to the ESCS building— the location of the original Somerville Math Fund Pi Night in 2003, planned by Wil Jacques, Mary McClelland, Colleen Murphy and Erica Voolich.

When planning the first SMF Pi Night, the Math Fund called the Table Talk Pie Company and explained what Pi Day was and Table Talk donated large pies for prizes and small pies for everyone.  Eleven years later, Table Talk is not only still donating to the Somerville Pi Day celebration, but to many more. In fact, this year Table Talk donated more than 40,000 pies to schools celebrating Pi Day.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is an affiliate of the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars. It was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  In April, the fund will be looking for applications for college mathematics scholarships.  For more information, visit www.somervillemathematicsfund.org, mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.