{"id":968,"date":"2015-03-15T15:11:34","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T07:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/?p=968"},"modified":"2024-02-16T21:09:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T13:09:16","slug":"three-geeky-ways-people-celebrated-pi-day-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/three-geeky-ways-people-celebrated-pi-day-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Geeky Ways People Celebrated Pi Day 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pi Day of the century – 3\/14\/15 9:26:53 having passed, I decided to scrape around the net to find some unusual ways people celebrated the occasion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pi Day is an unofficial celebration that comes around on March 14th each year. That’s because when written month first, the date becomes 3\/14, the first few digits of pi.<\/p>\n

As you can see, it’s a pretty geeky occasion to begin with.<\/p>\n

People celebrate by eating pie, or reciting pi, or other math-related activities.\u00a0This year was a super-special pi day, because if you write the two-digit year as well, you get 3\/14\/15. And pi is 3.1415926535…<\/p>\n

So, chomping down at 9:26 am and 53 seconds gives you a date and time with the first 10 digits of pi!<\/p>\n

Here are some of the geekiest ways I found that people celebrated Pi Day:<\/p>\n

The Raspberry Pi Sale<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, the Maker Shed had a Pi Day sale<\/a>. That may not sound too geeky, but consider what they were selling: The Raspberry Pi. Not Pie, but Pi. The Raspberry Pi is super cool, because it’s a full-featured computer that costs only about $30. And it’s small – I mean tiny, small enough to be carried by, say, a Lego Mindstorms robot or a drone.<\/p>\n

I remember talking with a friend last year about all the cool ideas for Halloween decorations they could do with a Raspberry Pi – spooky laughter that cackled when people walked by, of self-opening coffins driven by relays,\u00a0motion sensors and a Raspberry Pi. I think I’d had one beer too much, because I spent the whole conversation thinking “how will he accomplish all that with a raspberry-flavored dessert?” Fortunately, beer also makes me keep my mouth shut.<\/p>\n

The sale closed at 11:59pm on Pi Day, so it’s too late to get 15% off, but not too late to get a Raspberry Pi.<\/p>\n

Ingress Link Art<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ingress<\/a> is a super-geeky game – imagine a cross between roegaining, geocaching and capture-the-flag. Then make it global, and add a science-fictiony alien invasion storyline.<\/p>\n

Two teams, green and blue, battle it out for control of “portals” – normally monuments, public artwork or places\u00a0of national significance. Once portals are captured, they can be linked together, and three linked portals create a “control field,” freeing the minds of the people living under it\u00a0(or enslaving them, if the triangle was made by the other team!)<\/p>\n

The blue team in New York decided that for Pi Day, they’d do something special for their city – a pattern of control fields in the shape of a pie!<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>
New York Ingress Control Fields for Pi Day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Albuquerque, the green and blue teams put aside their in-game differences, and joined forces to create a great big pi covering their city:<\/p>\n

\"Ingress<\/a>
Ingress Fielding in Albuquerque for Pi Day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can probably imagine that would have taken weeks\u00a0of planning and a lot traveling\u00a0by dozens of players on the day itself!<\/p>\n

3D Printing<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may have heard of 3D printing. If you haven’t, you soon will – they are set to completely disrupt manufacturing and prototyping over the next 10 years. If you had a 3D printer in your home, you wouldn’t buy a phone case, you’d download and print one. Yes, you’d print – not a picture of a case – but a full-on three-dimensional phone case you then clip on your phone.<\/p>\n

And it doesn’t stop there – pretty much anything you can imagine made out of plastic, you can print to a 3D printer. Want customized plates for a party? Print some. Broken your toothbrush holder? Print one. Missing Lego piece? Print one.<\/p>\n

The website 3dprint.com<\/a> has a blog post listing a half-dozen cute pi-themed 3D printable items, including a cookie cutter, pencil holder, earrings and more.<\/p>\n

\"Pi<\/a>
Pi Day 3D Printables<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pi Day of the century – 3\/14\/15 9:26:53 having passed, I decided to scrape around the net to find some unusual ways people celebrated the occasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[523,521,520,270,519,522],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}