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 10 months 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 10 months ago
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
“exactly”
uh huh. and how are you measuring that?
lemmyman@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Now the engineers and/or scientists are crying
HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
I will be measuring it in meters. One. There you go.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Laser Measure.
exocrinous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
A nanodegree of difference in temperature will change the length of the metal.
bstix@feddit.dk 10 months ago
And this why you don’t touch the thermostat.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Laser measure
guywithoutaname@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Not true. If you define the circumference in terms of pi, you can define the circumference exactly.
gmtom@lemmy.world 10 months ago
“Find” not “define”
GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Putting things in base 10 is also a definition. Digits aren’t special.
HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
Eek, that makes my skin crawl. Taking what you said literally would imply that π² = π.
otp@sh.itjust.works 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
I’m confused, how is pi used as a unit? My understanding is that it’s a number
nul9o9@lemmy.world 10 months ago
6π is an acceptable answer for finding the circumference of a circle with a radius of 3 units of something.
janAkali@lemmy.one 10 months 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 10 months ago
seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Pi = 4! = 4×3×2 = 24?
nachtigall@feddit.de 10 months ago
Omfg why can’t I figure out why this does not work. Help me pls
RandomStickman@kbin.run 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
The lines in this are askew and it’s mildly annoying
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They’re there to askew why the logic doesn’t work.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 10 months 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 10 months ago
Does this work with triangles too?
UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 10 months ago
Let’s say you got a circle with radius 1/π…
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 10 months ago
came here for this
Dippy@beehaw.org 10 months 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 10 months ago
And 65 digits is sufficient to calculate the circumference of the visible universe to within a Planck length.
Scribbd@feddit.nl 10 months ago
We need MOAR precision!
dukk@programming.dev 10 months ago
I know enough digits of pi to calculate the circumference of the universe??
amio@kbin.social 10 months ago
Yeah, calling pi infinite makes me wanna cry, too.
Artyom@lemm.ee 10 months 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 10 months ago
Not if your diameter is d/pi. Then your circumference is d, where d > 0.
Check mate atheists.
ladicius@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Check mate matheists.
Ftfy.
UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.world 10 months 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 10 months ago
Jokes on them, tears are too salty to provide hydration.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 10 months ago
The circumference of a circle with a diameter of 1 cm is exactly π cm. There you have it.
idiomaddict@feddit.de 10 months ago
m e a s u r e
KidnappedByKitties@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Bah, the universe is too messy and disordered to be worth the trouble
JoYo@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Besides measuring it with a measuring tape.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Pi is 3.
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Ah, the Euler identity. 3^i^3-1=0
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Rofl :D Well, close enough, and about as sexy when a bit drunk.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Ahem. MathEmaticians.
SuckMyWang@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Prove it.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 10 months 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 10 months ago
More likely a mathematician would correct you instead of crying. Pi is not infinite, its decimal expansion is infinite!
zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
Its decimal expansion is finite in the base pi.
Steve@startrek.website 10 months ago
1?
chillhelm@lemmy.world 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
This was my first thought and then I realized I had been nerd sniped.