9-year-old girl memorizes 52 digits of pi in two weeks to celebrate Pi Day

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Pi Day comes around each year on March 14 as a way to celebrate a number that has no known end. One young Santa Barbara girl took it upon herself to memorize an impressive amount of that number this month for a class challenge!

Pi, which is often rounded to 3.14, is a mathematical constant that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Many people and computers have tried to calculate pi, but the number keeps on going for trillions of digits.

As a fun way to introduce his students to the lengthy number, a third grade teacher at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Barbara wanted to see how many digits of pi his students could memorize.

Leon Lewandowski, or Mr. L, gave his students a list of the first couple hundred digits of pi at the beginning of the month and challenged them to see how many they could memorize by Pi Day.

While multiple students accepted the challenge and gave it their all, one young girl blew him away.

9-year-old Vanessa successfully memorized 52 digits of pi, which Mr. L said was more than double what he was able to memorize!

In order to celebrate the students' efforts and Pi Day, Mr. L gave everyone a sliver of pie while Vanessa received a full slice of delicious chocolate pie.

Congratulations to Vanessa for her impressive accomplishment!