International Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th. This unofficial holiday was thought up by physicist Larry Shaw in 1987. He noted that in the American system of dates, in which the month is written before the day, the date of March 14th – 3/14 – matches the first numbers of π – 3.14. The SUSU Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics prepared an internet quest dedicated to this holiday.
Students made a video in which a stranger in a black cap kidnaps one of the members of the INSM Student Council, Vera Razygraeva, and to save her, the participants must pass a test on their knowledge of Pi. The test features questions on the Pi digits after the comma, on Pi history, and even tasks on calculating the diameter of the Kremlin clocks.
“Really it was not just me who worked on this quest. The main part, the test itself, was done by Dmitriy Kicheev. The idea occurred to us quite spontaneously when we were talking about Pi Day. We wanted to do something interesting which wouldn’t take a lot of time and energy, and so that all students could participate in the event. And the plot came to mind a long time ago, we just added details to it during filming,” says second-year student of the SUSU INSM, Vera Razygraeva.
The winner will be determined at the final of the contest “Miss and Mister INSM 2018” in the Sigma building on March 29th.