Pi Day

Did you know March 14th is Pi Day?  I'm a math and science nerd and didn't even know it.  Of course we all know Pi is 3.14, so March being the third month.....it all kind of makes sense now.  Well, the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore which is super awesome to begin with had a huge celebration with loads of fun activities AND free pie!!  It was the coolest.  I was with my friend who is a high school English teacher and her kids and Kara, so I was certainly the one who was the most excited, but my inner math geek was in absolute heaven.  The day was sooooo cool.  Here's some pictures:

Kara pretending to eat the pie that *I* ate.  :-)  It's called the Baltimore Bomber.  Chocolate pie with crushed up Berger cookies (a Baltimore tradition) inside.  Yep, it was even better than it sounds.

 Lift the block below to get the balls swinging all at once.  Try to guess which one will keep swinging the longest.

 Clouds

 To kids clouds look like cotton, so it's neat to see how airplanes can fly through them - they're just vapor.

 Watching the coins go round and round until it goes into the hole.  (They have these at the mall too.)

 Magnets through a thick liquid.  So neat.

 Watching a spark jump from metal rod to metal rod, all the way up

 Kids got to hang their own number to add to pi

 Here we are at the beginning

 Kara got her pi sticker

 She wears it beautifully, doesn't she?

 Race to see how far you can run in 3.14 seconds

 Look at her go - as fast as lightening!

 She made it to the 47th digit and earned a second sticker.  Go girl!

 Making a pi bracelet

 Each number gets a color, add the beads to the bracelet and you have a pi bracelet!  Or, if you're Kara, you just add a bunch of purples because they're pretty.  :-)

 Kara loved this thing

 She said, "it's a hypnotizer!"

 Learning about hurricanes and the Sun and the earth at night and all kinds of good stuff

 Hey mom, look at the hypnotizer!  lol!

 Back to the screen.  It takes 1 million earths to fill up the sun.  Whoa, that's a big sun.  Look at how much we're learning!

 The planetarium had a special pi day display - the first 10,000 digits of pi!  Isn't it beautiful?!

 Ah, good old pi.  We spent time looking for numbers, proving there is no pattern, and just hanging out under the number.  I loooooved it.  Kara whispered to me, "is this all we're doing here?"  She was ready to go.  She'll get it when she's older and realize what pi is all about.  And our God who made math and numbers and all the cool things He can do with them.  Fascinating.

 Then we got to Kara's favorite place - a giant magnetic wall you hang ramps on.  Can you find the white ball racing down the track she made?

 Connecting pipes to force the stream one way or the other.

 Ah, experimenting is the best way to learn!  Look at that pipe.

 Playing legos.  Wait.  We have those at home!

 Looking at Myrtle the turtle

 An instrument!  Quick, get a picture for her portfolio - music class anyone?

 Their gecko is molting.  I thought this was sooooo cool.

 She kept rubbing against the wall of that little wood house - that skin looked itchy!

 My girl in the Science center with an awesome view of the Harbor

A little less of my girl, a little more of the Harbor

Happy Pi Day everyone!  Apparently pi is 3.1415, so in 2015, there'll be a REAL celebration.  :-)