3rd Annual Pi Day
Celebrated at Parkside!!

Thank you to all who helped make Pi Day a successful one!!

Pi Day (3.14159.....) is traditionally celebrated nationally on March 14!  But because it fell on a Saturday this year, Pi Day was celebrated by Parkside on Monday, March 16th.  The day started off with a competition held in the homerooms of the 1st through 8th grades, where students demonstrated how many digits of Pi they could memorize.  Before we go any further, you may be asking, "What exactly is Pi?"

Pi is a number that is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle.  See the picture below!!  It is approximately equal to 3.14159265358979323846.. and so on and so on. 

Last year's winners memorized 71 digits of Pi; this year we had almost 10 people surpass that, and 2 students memorized over 100 digits.  Our overall winner was 5th grader, Tilon D., who memorized 118 digits of Pi, a digit for everyone in the Gym during school meeting.  Other individual class winners were as follows:

• 1st Grade: David D. (66 digits)
• 2nd Grade: Chelsea A. (58 digits)
• 3rd Grade: Caleb D. (100 digits)
• 4th Grade: Neil P. (83 digits)
• 5th Grade: Tilon D. (118 digits)
• 6th Grade: Anthony C. (77 digits)
• 7th Grade: Colin M. (61 digits)
• 8th Grade: Alexandria S. (71 digits)

Along with the digit competition, students also participated in Mousetrap car races.  The goal was to have your car cross mid-court before your opponent's.  You can see some of the sample cars made by the students in the picture to the left.  We had our Little Techies (JK and SK) and 1st Graders make their cars in teams.  They pushed their cars to propel them as a part of the race, where everyone else had to use mousetraps as their only source of power.  Our overall winner, with a very impressive car, was 5th grader Monique M.  It was very fast and well built, adjustable, took into consideration torque and even the moment of inertia of the wheel.  Fourth grader Neil P. came in second overall.  Colin M's car took distance.

Thanks to all Parents who supplied desserts that were enjoyed by the school after the mousetrap car race!  Your support made it a great day!