News
Pi Day In Princeton!
By Ryan Fennell
PRINCETON - This coming Sunday is not only Albert Einstein's birthday, it is also a date that is celebrated for it's numerical significance.
And this year, Mimi Omiecinski, owner of the Princeton Tour Company, decided that it would be fitting for Princeton to join the celebration.
In addition to being the birthday of Princeton's most famous former resident, the fourteenth day of the third month of the year, or 3/14 is Pi Day - 3.14 being the first three numbers of a series that symbolizes the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. (Mathematically speaking, Pi is written as 3.14159265358979323846...)
The coincidence might have gone unnoticed in these parts were it not for Omiecinski.
When she isn't giving tours in her historic hometown she is panicking about not giving tours.
Omiecinski spends that time studying the history of Princeton and its multitude of genius residents.
Through her research, Omiecinski discovered the interesting coincidence that Einstein was born on Pi Day and decided to turn it into a full day event.
This Sunday, Princeton will host the first Princeton Pi Day and Einstein's Birthday Celebration.
"I wanted to create an event that would support my local library where I do a predominant amount of my research," Omiecinski said. "The other part I wanted to create was something the shop owners and merchants could really look forward to and could participate in."
According to Omiecinski she simply plugged in March 14 in an Internet search engine and found that all over the world people celebrated Pi Day. "They mostly celebrate Pi but some also included Einstein's birthday.
(I thought) I'm in the middle of academic genius country, I'm putting a red ribbon around this thing and we're going to package it," Omiecinski said.
The festivities begin at the Princeton Public Library at 1 p.m. with a pie-eating contest followed by a Pi recitation celebration.
"We we're going to have a (Pi recitation) competition but it was getting way too aggressive," Omiecinski said. "So we're going to keep it fun and making it a celebration."
At 1:59 pm, the next three numbers in Pi, there will be interactive lab experiments at the library's community room hosted by the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab.
There will also be an Einstein look-a-like contest and the winner will receive a three-dimensional cake courtesy of Lillipies.
At 3:14 there will be a birthday party and pie-throwing event at Palmer Square Green.
Over 60 local businesses are participating by instituting "Pi pricing" for the day with items and services priced using variations of Pi.
"I think it's a clever idea and all of them are totally on board," Omiecinski said.
There will also be re-enactment tours through Princeton beginning at 1:59 and running until 5 p.m. where visitors will receive a map with the location of the first re-enactor, Einstein's mother. At that point visitors will have their maps marked with the location of the next re-enactor. Along the way, visitors might see the Pi Day logo in a storefront which will let them know that that business is offering a "Pi priced" special that day.
"The major thing is that we've got all this genius here in town," Omiecinski said. "Princeton has more Nobel Prize winners than any other two square miles on Earth."
For more information about Pi Day visit www.princetontourcompany.com or www.visitprinceton.org.
