In celebration of Pi Day 2016, the American River College mathematics department is hosting an event that includes an art contest, games, pie eating contest, and a Pi digit reciting competition.
The event will be held March 14 from 12:26 p.m. to 2:38 p.m. in the Liberal Arts area near Davies Hall.
“We are excited for this year’s Pi Day, I’m hopeful that this will be our biggest one yet,” mathematics professor Rocio Owens said.
“We’re hopeful that students will come and have fun while receiving math awareness.”
Owens is facilitating this event with contributions from other mathematics professors, the math club, Learning Resource Center, the student center and the bookstore.
“The bookstore was kind enough to donate tumbler cups and the student center donated $10 meal vouchers as prizes for the winners of the art contest,” Owens said. “We also have t-shirts this year.”
The art contest is open to all students and employees of ARC and has to be Pi related.
The event is receiving encouragement from the humanities department, where professor Alice Kingsnorth is encouraging her students to participate.
“I’m happy we’re receiving support from other departments, we want as much involvement from students as possible,” Owens said.
Art submissions can be any medium, including drawings, paintings, photographs, floral displays, welded objects, sculptures and more.
The deadline for art submissions is March 14 at 9:26 a.m., they are to be dropped off in the math department office in Howard Hall.
Mathematics professor Glenn Pico will be putting together a presentation on how Pi relates to pie and will be involved in all other activities.
“I’m happy to be involved with Pi Day, us faculty in the math department get excited every year to host such an event,” Pico said.
ARC public information officer Scott Crow said that Pi day is one of the ways the math department reaches out to students and supports them.
“The contest and Pi Day activities are designed to encourage students to have fun with math, while also reminding students that today’s competitive global workplace increasingly calls for people with solid STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills,” Crow said.
ARC’s math club will be selling pies throughout the duration of the event to raise money for their club.
They are also collaborating with the LRC to come up with math equations for the participants of the event to solve.
This is the 3rd year ARC has celebrated Pi Day.
Corrections: The featured image associated with this article was incorrectly said to be taken in 2015. It was also listed as a file photo. It was actually taken back in 2014 by Alexander Panasenko.
