Now That's a Lot of Pi

A color-coded paper-link chain was wound around itself many times over, forming a giant circle in the middle of the Masuk High School gymnasium floor Tuesday morning. All told, there were 75,000 links, each representing a digit of pi.

Mary Ahlers, Masuk Math Department chairwoman, said pi is 3.14, and the numbers to the right of the four go on into infinity and never repeat. Pi is the measure around a circle and the measure of the longest distance across divided to get 3.14.

On Pi Day, March 14, Ahlers and the high school’s math teachers decided their students should go for the world record for making a loop paper chain representing digits in pi.

Currently, there is no Guinness world record, but Masuk sent out an application to Guiness and have to document what the school has done and record it on video with a color chart. It has to be covered by an outside news source and there has to be witnesses. Library media center person Meghan Main and Principal John Battista volunteered to be witnesses Tuesday.

"We saw one school with 10,000," Ahlers said of the number of digits in an interview before Tuesday. "We were going to go to 31,000 to have a Guinness record, but saw online one school with 66,000, so now goal is 75,000. We made it and will display it."

Mari O'Rourke, a Masuk math teacher, said just about every student pitched in in making the longest color-coded paper chain representing digits of pi. It stretches over one mile.

"Even special needs kids," O'Rourke said Tuesday. "Each kid did 50 links and some students did more."

Teachers had to check the arithmetic, which O'Rourke said was a tedious process. A pink loop represents zero, one is a red loop two is orange, three is yellow, four is green, five is light blue, six dark blue, 7 is brown, 8 is white and 9 is black, according to Ahlers.

The loop chain was supposed to be stretched out on the school football field, but wet weather made teachers and students move the event to the gym inside Masuk. An NBC news camera rolled as students crowded around the chain. Cheers filled the room after O'Rourke's daughter, Maya, 4, stapled the very last link.

"It's so sweet that they let her do that," O'Rourke said of teachers and students afterward. "She won't remember, but I will."