AiS Challenge Team Abstract

Team Number: 16

School Name: Summer Teacher Institute

Area of Science: Mathematics

Project Title: A Reexamination of Buffon's Needle

 


Buffon's Needle is a very old random distribution experiment. It seems that le Compte de Buffon(doesn't that mean clown?), being of the aristocracy, had insufficient tasks to occupy his time and one afternoon (probably after too many glasses of vin with the boys) tripped and spilled his wife's sewing basket. After many similar events, he discovered that the probability of one of the needles actually falling across a crack in the floor (remember, needles were expensive in the eighteenth century) approached the value of pi when performed many times. Since the results of the experiment have already been determined by any number of inebriated Frenchmen, we intend to use it as a study of the development of another type of mathematical model.

Team Members

Sponsoring Teacher

Project Mentor(s)