Pi Webpage
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


By: Andrea Springston and Ruth Hernandez  5th period  Algebra II  Mr. Young

 

dyoung@fayar.net

 

 

 

 

What is PI?

 

In our society, pi is dealt with a bit in math class, but not much more than that. For most people, this brings up the immediate question, "What is pi?" Pi is a very cool number that describes a circle. This means for one thing that if you take the diameter of a circle (the segment that goes from one side to the other cutting across the center) and multiply it by pi, you get the circumference of the circle (the distance around the outside). There are other formulas you can use pi with too. So, pi is a weird number that somehow or other always can help you find distances pertaining to a circle.

The next question that may arise is, "Why is it called pi instead of a number that I can count like 3.1415?" Actually, 3.1415 is the beginning of pi; however, it goes on farther than that, in fact it goes on forever. Pi has no end! There are computers as we speak that are spitting out numbers of pi that they calculate using formulas called algorithms. Another neat thing about pi is that no pattern ever appears twice in the number. "How do you know that if the number goes on forever? It might repeat somewhere." Actually, we are sure it doesn't repeat anywhere as mathematicians have worked out formulas that mathematically prove it, and in math, once you have proof of something, there's no easily way to prove otherwise, it is pretty much fact.

 

 

Interesting Pi Links:

http://www.winternet.com/~mchristi/piday.html

http://www.jgk.org/links/pi-more.html

http://www.wpdpi.com/index.shtml

http://www.astro.univie.ac.at/~wasi/PI/pi_club.html

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTop...

http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/pi/

http://www.facade.com/Fun/amiinpi/

 

 

Pi Activities:

Find the decimal of the whole class, the percent of the entire class and then multiply each decimal by 360 degrees to find the size of the circle graph that that section will represent.

Favorite

No. of Students

Decimal

Percent

Degrees

Baseball

11

0.44

44%

158.4

Basketball

6

0.24

24%

86.4

Football

7

0.28

28%

100.8

Hockey

1

0.04

4%

14.4

Draw a circle and using your protractor section off each sport using the correct number of degrees from the table above.

Other Survey Ideas: