Easy. Take a wire that is exactly 1 meter long. Form a circle from the wire. The circumference of that circle is 1 meter.
suck it, math nerds
Submitted 1 month ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/79ed6ea9-1201-45f1-b9a3-94a018de47b6.png
Comments
bstix@feddit.dk 1 month ago
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
“exactly”
uh huh. and how are you measuring that?
lemmyman@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Now the engineers and/or scientists are crying
HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
You don’t need to, it’s defined. (Lol). If you take a circle with a circumference of 1, then its circumference will be 1… I think I might have lost some braincells reading this.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I don’t have to measure it. I stick under glass and define it as the standard which all other measurements are derived from.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 month ago
I will be measuring it in meters. One. There you go.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Laser Measure.
exocrinous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
A nanodegree of difference in temperature will change the length of the metal.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 month ago
And this why you don’t touch the thermostat.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Laser measure
guywithoutaname@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Not true. If you define the circumference in terms of pi, you can define the circumference exactly.
gmtom@lemmy.world 1 month ago
“Find” not “define”
GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Putting things in base 10 is also a definition. Digits aren’t special.
HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
That doesnt make a difference. You can find the exact circumference of a circle, you just cant express it in the decimal system as a number (thats why we have a symbol for it so you can still express the exact value)
janAkali@lemmy.one 1 month ago
Who said Pi is infinite? If we take Pi as base unit, it is exactly 1. No fraction, perfectly round.
Now everything else requires an infinite precision.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 month ago
Eek, that makes my skin crawl. Taking what you said literally would imply that π² = π.
otp@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I’m pretty sure a base-Pi counting system would mean that Pi is π, not 1.
You’d count π, 2π, 3π, 4π, and so on. It doesn’t change reality, just the way you count and represent numbers.
I might be off, but it’s definitely not π = 1.
janAkali@lemmy.one 1 month ago
You still think in 1-based system, Pi unit * Pi unit is Pi of Pi units or 3.14159… Pi units. Also, Pi unit / Pi unit is 1/Pi Pi units or 0.318309886183790… Pi units.
*Numbers written with digits are 1-based numbers.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 1 month ago
I’m confused, how is pi used as a unit? My understanding is that it’s a number
nul9o9@lemmy.world 1 month ago
6π is an acceptable answer for finding the circumference of a circle with a radius of 3 units of something.
janAkali@lemmy.one 1 month ago
1 is also a number, a number we chose by convention to be a base unit for all numbers. You can break down every number down to this unit.
20 is 20 1s. 1.5 is 1 and a half 1.
If we have Pi as a unit, circumference of a circle would be radius*2 of Pi units. But everything that doesn’t involve Pi would be a fraction of Pi, e.g. a normal 1 is roughly 1/3 of Pi units, 314 is roughly 100 Pi units, etc. etc.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Pi = 4! = 4×3×2 = 24?
nachtigall@feddit.de 1 month ago
Omfg why can’t I figure out why this does not work. Help me pls
RandomStickman@kbin.run 1 month ago
I think it's because no matter how many corners you cut it's still an approximation of the circumference. There's just an infinite amount of corners that sticks out
Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
It’s a fractal problem, even if you repeat the cutting until infinite, there are still a roughness with little triangles which you must add to Pi, there are no difference between image 4 and 5, the triangles are still there, smaller but more. But it’s a nice illusion.
ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Because you never make a circle. You just make a polygon with a perimeter of four and an infinite number of sides as the number of sides approaches infinity.
ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
The lines in this are askew and it’s mildly annoying
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They’re there to askew why the logic doesn’t work.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 month ago
That approach works for area but not for perimeter, because cutting off the corners gives you a shape whose area is closer to the circle’s, but it doesn’t change the perimeter at all.
Dippy@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Does this work with triangles too?
UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 1 month ago
Let’s say you got a circle with radius 1/π…
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 1 month ago
came here for this
Dippy@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Nasa uses 15 digits of pi for solar system travel. And 42 digits is enough to calculate the entire universe to atomic accuracy
Malgas@beehaw.org 1 month ago
And 65 digits is sufficient to calculate the circumference of the visible universe to within a Planck length.
Scribbd@feddit.nl 1 month ago
We need MOAR precision!
dukk@programming.dev 1 month ago
I know enough digits of pi to calculate the circumference of the universe??
amio@kbin.social 1 month ago
Yeah, calling pi infinite makes me wanna cry, too.
Artyom@lemm.ee 1 month ago
If only mathematicians had a number for that. Ya know, the ones famous for making names for things on average once per published paper, most of them completely useless.
LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not if your diameter is d/pi. Then your circumference is d, where d > 0.
Check mate atheists.
ladicius@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Check mate matheists.
Ftfy.
UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Technically you can’t measure anything accurately because there’s an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 0. Whose to say it’s exactly 1? It could be off by an infinite amount of 0s and 1.
Achilles and the Tortoise paradox.
ooterness@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Jokes on them, tears are too salty to provide hydration.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 1 month ago
The circumference of a circle with a diameter of 1 cm is exactly π cm. There you have it.
idiomaddict@feddit.de 1 month ago
m e a s u r e
KidnappedByKitties@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Bah, the universe is too messy and disordered to be worth the trouble
JoYo@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Besides measuring it with a measuring tape.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Pi is 3.
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Ah, the Euler identity. 3^i^3-1=0
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Rofl :D Well, close enough, and about as sexy when a bit drunk.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Ahem. MathEmaticians.
SuckMyWang@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Prove it.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And you can’t trust anything calculated either an imaginary number. Common guys, it’s right there, it’s imaginary like the totally not AI person I’m pretending to be.
ns1@feddit.uk 1 month ago
More likely a mathematician would correct you instead of crying. Pi is not infinite, its decimal expansion is infinite!
zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Plus even that isn’t enough: 10/3 has an infinite decimal expansion (in base 10 at least) too, but if π = 10/3, you’d be able to find exact circumferences. Its irrationality is what makes it relevant to this joke.
A mathematician is also perfectly happy with answers like “4π” as exact.
Plus what’s to stop you from having a rational circumference but irrational radius?
Writing this, I feel like I might have accidentally proved your point.
danc4498@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Mathematicians taking a physics class and being told they have to round things. That’s when the tears start flowing.
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 1 month ago
Its decimal expansion is finite in the base pi.
Steve@startrek.website 1 month ago
1?
chillhelm@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This is the correct answer. Pi is known. What it’s decimal expansion looks like is irrelevant. It’s 1 in base Pi.
cogman@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yup, similar to the square root of two and Euler’s number.
These are numbers defined by their properties and not their exact values. In fact, we have imaginary numbers that don’t have values and yet are still extremely useful because of their defined properties.
Carnelian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The actual punchline here should have been “there is no known equation to calculate the exact perimeter of an ellipse”, then sucking tears from an astrophysicist
marcos@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Try it when you find some physicist that cares about exact values. Or when you see pigs flying over your head, both are about as likely.
LanternEverywhere@kbin.social 1 month ago
Exactly, a fraction is completely as valid of a way to express a number as using a decimal.
1/2 = 0.5
They're both fully valid ways to write the exact same quantity
maniclucky@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This was my first thought and then I realized I had been nerd sniped.