And I can say that fortunately, there are actually so many ways to use GIFs in our classrooms. Although using GIF animations as a technological tool that is very rare in mathematics education, you can do things with these animations that you can’t do with plain text. For instance, instead of telling the students the directions over and over again, just make a GIF for each step. And then the students will see and know it’s important and remember all those parts of a solution or formula. You will keep your students learning and laughing. It could be a cool way to be the coolest teacher at your school.

If you are good so far, let’s take a look at some beautiful mathematical GIFs and learn!

What is π/pi and why is it 3.14something?

Let’s try to measure a circle. The diameter and radius are just straight lines. We can easily measure them with a ruler. But to get the circumference, it is not that easy. The relationship between the circumference of a circle and diameter is so unique. When we divide the circumference by the diameter, we will always get the same number, no matter how big or small the circle gets. But interestingly we can never express it as a ratio of two whole numbers. We can only get close. It is an on-going series of digits starting with 3.14159 and continuing forever! That’s why, instead of trying to write out an infinite number of digits every time, we prefer using the Greek letter π/pi.