## Sunday, March 16, 2014

### Pi day!!

I hope you all had a good pi day.  Now, pi day is not something traditionally celebrated in Germany.   Some could argue that it's not traditionally celebrated in the US outside of areas with high concentrations of math nerds (ie science museums and college math departments) but that's beside the point.  It really isn't celebrated here for 3 reasons: 1. Here, everyone writes the date differently.  In Germany the 14th of March, 2014 would be written 14.3.year instead of 3/14/year.  Clearly 14.3 isn't pi (and unfortunately 31.4 just doesn't exist). So that's problem one.  2. they don't pronounce it like "pie" but rather like "pee".  3.  pie just isn't a German dessert.

BUT, I am not a German, I am an American, and thus, if I want to eat pie on the 14th of March and celebrate the wonders of pi, then I will.  And since I try to keep Sasha and I from having a horrible diet (sometimes), I decided that my lab should celebrate pi day.  As I wrote to them in an e-mail, "There is pie. Free pie for you.  Are you really going to complain about celebrating a minor US holiday? I think not".  And they got more into it than I thought they would.  In addition to serving our pie at 1:59,  we had the "1st annual MPI for terrestrial microbiology Ecophysiology department pi digit recitation contest" for which Monika was the winner:

And we all ate pie (one is cherry, one is apple). And it was delicious. And very educational.
 Behold, the amazing number of pie, er, pi.