A mini-matura in mathematics, a pirate field game, popular science lectures and many other attractions - all to show that science can be interesting and fun. On March 13, as part of the UG Open Days, the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics held Pi Day.
The date of the event - during the Open Days of the University of Gdańsk - was not accidental: the organisers wanted students participating in Pi Day to be able to take advantage of other attractions offered on campus. The first Pi Day in the world was celebrated on March 14, 1988 (March 14 is written as ‘3.14’).
The event was held as part of the next edition of the ‘Science? That's the kind I like!’ campaign. It is also a continuation of the long-standing tradition of WMFI in organising popular science events. Examples of such events are Pi Day and Scientific Santa Claus Day.
‘We want to popularise science, show that it is interesting (and not boring), that you can have fun with science and that it is worth coming to study with us to develop your knowledge in these fields,’ says dr Marta Frankowska, event coordinator.
The event is primarily aimed at secondary and primary school pupils (especially years 7 and 8) and, as dr Marta Frankowska emphasises, it is attracting a lot of interest. The places for the workshops and lectures are often fully booked on the first day of registration.
Although Pi Day is primarily intended to promote science, there is also a lot of history: famous mathematicians and physicists, historical discoveries and calculation methods have been the subject of many attractions. Dr M. Frankowska points out that while students are often able to name famous poets, they are much less familiar with mathematicians and physicists.
The atmosphere of history could be felt in the Scottish Café, which refers to the Polish school of mathematics in Lviv that operated in the 1920s. ‘It was a scientific community of mathematicians centred mainly around Stefan Banach,’ explains dr Marta Frankowska. ‘They were world-class mathematicians; they made a huge contribution to the development of mathematics and laid the foundations for functional analysis. They had a specific way of working. They met in the Kawiarnia Szkocka café and solved mathematical problems: at first by writing on the tabletops with chalk, then on napkins. Eventually, Stefan Banach's wife bought a book in which the gentlemen could write down their mathematical problems. The author offered a prize for solving the problem, the value of which depended on the difficulty of the problem, e.g. a small problem - a small beer. But in the 1960s, for example, the prize for solving one of the problems was a goose.’
In addition to the Scottish Café at the WMFI, where students - following the example of Lviv scholars - had the opportunity to solve mathematical problems on napkins, they could also visit the games room (with board games using mathematics) or stands set up by students to discover, with a grain of salt, how much they have in common with the number Pi.