These are advanced common core students. I wanted them to experience that they can choose variables to make sense for them. I also needed to introduce a third dimension to their math equations. We have played with Pi before, so that irrational is not new.

Pizza is loved, and I wanted to campaign for the vast superiority of Chicago Deep Dish. It is to bait them, it has vegetables... ewe... But they could see that more pizza might be a great advancement in the history of pizza. The pneumonic of PiZZa being the greatest equation in the world was too good to pass up. And Pi day was coming up.

The kids got pizza as a reward, so it was a complete win in their minds.

You are right about area should be A, instead of height, and radius should not be Z, either, but I improvised and made it the Z axis.