Pi Day was a day for breaking records at Oh WOW! downtown

YOUNGSTOWN

When Anna Olivier began her day, she probably didn’t realize she would be part of an effort to break a local record on a day that comes once every 100 years.

“We broke the hula-hoop record,” the 12-year-old Boardman Center Middle School student said. “It was a blast.”

Anna was among 46 people who performed a variety of hula-hoop gyrations while eating pie, which set the record. The previous mark was 28.

In addition to enjoying pie for dessert, she enjoyed learning more about pi for fun. She was able to do both courtesy of Saturday’s Pi Day at OH WOW! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology at 11 W. Federal St., downtown.

The seven-hour event was to celebrate pi, the Greek mathematical symbol denoting the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. The gathering also offered a series of interactive activities to encourage participants to explore the wonders of geometry, noted Audra Carlson, the center’s education director.

Saturday was selected as the day to honor the Greek symbol around the world because the date was 3/14/15, which happens only once each century, and the approximate numerical value of pi is 3.1415. In addition, March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday.

Read more about the day's festivities in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.