I did not expect to come across this as I was Googling around for something to write about for Pi Day this year, but it’s glorious and I love it.

An excellent student group from MIT has been creating suitably kooky videos every Pi Day since 2014. That first year they just filmed several people getting a pie in the face (below), but in the intervening decade, the students’ filmmaking has surpassed the ever-so-slightly eccentric and graduated to the downright outlandish.

2024’s Pi Day offering from the MITbloggers takes a leaf from this year’s Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer, except with a beaver in the title role. Why a beaver? The animal has been MIT’s mascot since 1914 thanks to “its remarkable engineering and mechanical skill and its habits of industry.” Beaverheimer is a five-minute opus featuring several student actors, a props person, a special effects supervisor, and even someone dedicated to getting location sound just right. It follows Tim T. Beaver who is trying to invent a way to stop the power of MIT admissions letters exploding and destroying the universe. Naturally.

The admissions angle seems to be a theme year after year on the MITbloggers YouTube channel, since prospective students receive their decision letters on March 14th: how fitting for one of the world’s finest technology institutions! Previous years have seen a journey full of robots, fire, jujutsu sorcery, and calculus inspired by the fantasy film Howl’s Moving Castle (above), and a Star Wars tribute featuring Baby Yoda rescuing BB8 (below).

These Pi Day admissions videos are our favourite thing on the internet since that puppy befriended a duckling. Drop suggestions for next year’s video in the comments and we’ll try to get your ideas to the MITbloggers. Be weird; they seem to like weird. Happy Pi Day, everyone!