Happy Pi Day from BSB Shunyi!

Happy Pi Day! Today our students have been celebrating Pi and its many applications outside of the mathematics classroom! KS3 students have completed lots of exciting Pi-related activities in each of their different subjects today, as well as a deeper exploration of Pi during their mathematics class.

During design technology lessons students completed an investigation to discover the value of Pi for themselves. They did this by measuring lots of different circles around the classroom and studying the relationship between the circumference and diameter.

In English lessons some of our students wrote Pi-Ku poems, like the traditional haiku poems but using the first digits of Pi to decide the number of syllables in each line, please see some of these below.

During their Drama lesson students investigated the value of Pi by working together and using the lengths of their outstretched arms to represent the diameter and circumference. The largest circle we completed was a circle made from 6 students in diameter and 18 students around the circumference. This was great fun and a nice visual for the students to recognize that as the diameter increases, so does the circumference, this allowed for some great discussions around the ratio between the two.

During their science lessons students completed some official NASA problems, showing how Pi is an imperative part of exploring space. Students used Pi to calculate the distance that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter travels as it orbits Mars. We also looked at the Lunar Flashlight mission, which uses Pi to calculate the area covered by a laser pulse, this helps to find the amount of frost in the Moon’s craters and can prepare us for extended missions to the moon.

There were many more activities that students completed throughout the day in celebration of Pi and all its fantastic applications to the real world!

Well done to all the students that got involved across the day to celebrate with the mathematics department!