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 9 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 9 months ago
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
“exactly”
uh huh. and how are you measuring that?
lemmyman@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Now the engineers and/or scientists are crying
HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
I will be measuring it in meters. One. There you go.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Laser Measure.
exocrinous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
A nanodegree of difference in temperature will change the length of the metal.
bstix@feddit.dk 9 months ago
And this why you don’t touch the thermostat.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Laser measure
guywithoutaname@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Not true. If you define the circumference in terms of pi, you can define the circumference exactly.
gmtom@lemmy.world 9 months ago
“Find” not “define”
GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Putting things in base 10 is also a definition. Digits aren’t special.
HopFlop@discuss.tchncs.de 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
Eek, that makes my skin crawl. Taking what you said literally would imply that π² = π.
otp@sh.itjust.works 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
I’m confused, how is pi used as a unit? My understanding is that it’s a number
nul9o9@lemmy.world 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
Pi = 4! = 4×3×2 = 24?
nachtigall@feddit.de 9 months ago
Omfg why can’t I figure out why this does not work. Help me pls
RandomStickman@kbin.run 9 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 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
The lines in this are askew and it’s mildly annoying
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They’re there to askew why the logic doesn’t work.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 9 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 9 months ago
Does this work with triangles too?
UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 9 months ago
Let’s say you got a circle with radius 1/π…
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 9 months ago
came here for this
Dippy@beehaw.org 9 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 9 months ago
And 65 digits is sufficient to calculate the circumference of the visible universe to within a Planck length.
Scribbd@feddit.nl 9 months ago
We need MOAR precision!
dukk@programming.dev 9 months ago
I know enough digits of pi to calculate the circumference of the universe??
amio@kbin.social 9 months ago
Yeah, calling pi infinite makes me wanna cry, too.
Artyom@lemm.ee 9 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 9 months ago
Not if your diameter is d/pi. Then your circumference is d, where d > 0.
Check mate atheists.
ladicius@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Check mate matheists.
Ftfy.
UsernameIsTooLon@lemmy.world 9 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 9 months ago
Jokes on them, tears are too salty to provide hydration.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 9 months ago
The circumference of a circle with a diameter of 1 cm is exactly π cm. There you have it.
idiomaddict@feddit.de 9 months ago
m e a s u r e
KidnappedByKitties@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Bah, the universe is too messy and disordered to be worth the trouble
JoYo@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Besides measuring it with a measuring tape.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Pi is 3.
Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Ah, the Euler identity. 3^i^3-1=0
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Rofl :D Well, close enough, and about as sexy when a bit drunk.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Ahem. MathEmaticians.
SuckMyWang@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Prove it.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 9 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 9 months ago
More likely a mathematician would correct you instead of crying. Pi is not infinite, its decimal expansion is infinite!
zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
Its decimal expansion is finite in the base pi.
Steve@startrek.website 9 months ago
1?
chillhelm@lemmy.world 9 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 9 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 9 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 9 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 9 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 9 months ago
This was my first thought and then I realized I had been nerd sniped.