Today is pi-day in the U.S., since the month/day combination are 03.14 (the first digits of pi). Loth to miss out on the possibility of a festival, the Liceo and other area schools decided to go for the Guinness World Records for the longest human chain containing the digits of pi. It's much harder to describe than it really was (in some ways!). Essentially, each person had a digit, and everyone was lined up in order to provide pi to the nth decimal place.
In the end, there were over 1000 participants! Something like 1085, Jeremy said. Jeremy was an unwilling participant because in his mind it didn't give due respect to the constant...besides which, the European method of writing the date doesn't result in pi, and can't (they have day then month). If April 31 were to exist, you might be able to stretch the point, but even then, it would be 31/04. So, just no.
In any case, I thought it was a ton of fun. Michael and I were vastly amused to see that the smaller children (elementary school) were towards the end...as the decimal values got smaller, so did the people representing them!
I've lifted some photos off Facebook, with permission (thank you, Giuseppe Cecconi and Gilberto Santucci!), to give us a look at it:
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| Beginning the lineup (image from GC) |
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| Heading into the piazza (image from GC) |
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Still loading in participants (image from GS)
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| Wide-angle view; sorry about the distortion (image from GS) |
And now it's time to get the sour cherry-marzipan pie out of the oven!
Love,
So fun!
ReplyDeleteHow was the cherry-marzipan pie? T
Scrumptious!!! I had found some preserved tart cherries in Perugia, so I mixed those up with some starch, got F to make me some pastry, and lined the bottom with the marzipan. The kids were unanimous that I should make pie "more often." Since I make pie about every 2 years, I could agree without actually letting myself in for much!
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