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WEST WINDSOR –.Mercer County Community College students paid homage to the most famous of all irrational numbers on Pi Day, which coincides with Albert Einstein’s birthday on – when else? – March 14. (3.14 – Get it?)
Pi Day was first organized in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium, and has grown in popularity ever since. On March 12, 2009, Congress passed a resolution recognizing March 14 as Pi Day. At Mercer, students observed the occasion with baked goods, with pie serving as the main course. And as any high school geometry student knows, one can easily measure the surface area of a pie by using – pi.
Under the guidance of faculty advisor Professor Richard Porter, the Math Club took advantage of the occasion to hold a Pi Day bake sale in the Student Center. The club’s offerings featured baked goods, including pie, of course, from club members and donations from Shop Rite. The proceeds will help fund a trip to the Math Association of America meeting at Felician College in April. There, the club expects to compete in a math competition for community colleges.
On the other end of the student center Professor Jing Huang, faculty advisor for the Physics Club, and Physics Club members were less interested in 3.1415926535… and focused on the birthday of the most famous of physicists, Albert Einstein. But there was still plenty of pie in the form of a pie baking contest to go along with an Albert Einstein lookalike contest.
Nearly 90 students, faculty, and staff registered votes for the contest, selecting Physics Professor Bill Luyster as the contestant most resembling the father of the Theory of Relativity. And Math Professor Ken Klonda was the winner of the pi reciting contest, taking the number out to 69 digits.
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