On Saturday, June 6, Ynez School participated in the annual math field day.  The contest consisted of three rounds that each lasted 30 minutes, Conceptual Understanding, Problem Solving, and Skills.  The first two rounds are team events, while Skills was an individual event.  In conceptual understanding, each seventh grade team (including other districts) had to work together to solve two tasks.  However, the whole team had to work on one problem at a time.  Problem Solving was almost the same, but there was only one problem.  In skills, each member of each team had to take an 8 question test.  Every team in our school (4th – 8th), won a medal, except for the 7th grade team.  Pi is a number that never ends and it starts with 3.14… 

There are many different uses of Pi and it is extremely helpful in math and especially geometry.  Pi can be used in the formula 2πr to find the circumference of a circle.   It is also used in the formula πr² to find the area of the circle.  22/7 is sometimes the other way of putting Pi, even though it is bigger than pi. This year Pi day was on March 14, 2009.   And in case you don’t know, Pi is actually pronounced like pie, which is the dessert you eat after dinner!  Some things in this world involving people or objects are awesome and you probably would’ve never thought of it. 

For example, did you know that 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321?  If you don’t believe it, do the math.  Also, did you know that Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a real person?  Any Rubik’s cube combination can be solved in 17 turns if done correctly.  Here’s something that will shock you:  American Airlines saved $40,000 in the year of 1987 by removing one olive from every first class passenger’s salad.  If you drop a penny off the Empire State Building and it hits someone’s head, it can cause an injury since it’s going at a speed of 106 miles per hour.  Recently this weekend I got a new computer.  My last computer was 7 years old and it got infected with a virus. 

My new computer was $300, and it has 3 gigabytes of ram while my old computer only had 512 KB of ram.  That is almost 6 times more ram than I used to have.  I used to have a 64MB video card, but now I have a 128MB video card, which means my graphics card is two times better than before.  The old computer cost around $600 which is doubled the cost of my current computer.  The specs for the old computer will never match up with the new one.  There is just too much of a difference between one another.