I think it’s a joke about physicists not understanding tolerances.
I remember hearing an old story about a company buying signs from a contractor. The contractor produced all kinds of things, so it was fairly straightforward to send them the CAD file and stop worrying about it. One manager did an audit, and realized they were paying hundreds of dollars each for these basic signs. They weren’t fancy or anything, and were just signs throughout the facility that got updated regularly. So why the hell were they paying so much for what should have been a simple print job?
After some investigating, the manager discovered it was because the engineer who did the original design for the signs forgot to change their default tolerances from 3/1000 of an inch. The contractor was busting out calipers and meticulously measuring the spacing and sizing on each letter before it shipped out the door.
StThicket@reddthat.com 7 months ago
To a mathematician, pi is 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993
To an engineer, pi is 3
The joke is basically the same, since you get resistors in certain values, and it’s necessary to select the value closest to the one you need
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
No, to an engineer pi is 22/7, 355/113 if your tolerances are really tight. 3 is pi to a theologist, because that’s what the Bible uses.
bluewing@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Maybe round it up yo 4 just to be safe…
lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
I mean, depending on your calculations and scale, you might go a little more precise with it. At a diameter of, say, 10m for a semicircular bridge arc, that’s a difference of 1m.