Students at Ashe County High School indulged a little sweet revenge at the 2nd Annual Pi Day festivities last Thursday, as school faculty members took pies in their faces in front of a cheering student body.
Sponsored by the ACHS InterAct Club, Pi Day is an observation of March 14, or 3.14, which is also the mathematical constant Pi, represented by the Greek letter “Π,” defining the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference.
“We’ve got nine teachers and administrators the students have voted on,” said math teacher Trey Simmons as the candidates for public pieing took their seats on the dais in the ACHS gymnasium.
Some of the candidates were volunteers, others were nominated by the student body, said Simmons. Jars were labeled with their names, and students voted with their pocket change through the week, with the top three earners winning the dubious honor of having pies jammed in their faces in front of the entire school.
It was announced that $189.19 was raised through the voting, which will be donated to Relay for Life, and American Cancer Society fundraiser.
Simmons himself was one of the top earners, and joined Principal Jason Krider and social studies teacher Zach Russ in getting pied as the student body applauded from the bleachers.
Simmons and Krider received cream pies in round, nine-inch pie pans — with a circumference of 9 x 3.14 = 28.26 inches — but Russ was treated to a square chocolate “Pi Cake,” which had nothing at all to do with Pi, but was decorated with a large “Π ” written in icing.
Simmons’ own daughter, Emalee, was designated as the pie thrower.
For thousands of years, mathematicians worked to understand and calculate Pi. With the advent of calculus in the 15th century, Pi was accurately computed as a never-ending decimal, typically abbreviated to 3.14159.
Students at ACHS will, no doubt, throw a pieing extravaganza two years from now, when Pi Day will fall on the auspicious date 3.14.15, adding two more decimals of Pi.
The ‘pie in the face’ gag has been getting laughs for over 100 years, first appearing in the 1909 silent film, “Mr. Flip,” according to Wikipedia.
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