The value of pi

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

<< "He [Solomon] made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring
ten
 cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty
cubits
 to measure around it.  (1 Kings 7:23)
  >>

??????
This the verse that Kornform quotes and he gets quite irritated that the
actual measurement of the circle should have been more than the 30 cubits
specified.   After all, he says, pi is 3.14.  Well actually he is wrong. 
Pi
is irrational.  In other words, it is a decimal that goes on and on and on
and
never ends or repeats.  It is
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944
592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647
093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559
64462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823 to just a few digits. 
You
can get it to 50000 digits at www.ccsf.caltech.edu/~roy/pi.50000.html.  It
has
been calculated by supercomputers to millions of digits.  So, why didn't
God
just dedicate an infinitely large book just to tell us the comparatively
unimportant information of the circumference a pool.  The truth is that
anywhere you chose to terminate pi you are introducing an inaccuracy.  3 is
fine for an approximation, especially if it is something reasonable picky
like
the circumference of a pool.

	Second, the scripture says that the pool was circular in shape.  It does
not
say that it was a perfect and absolutely flawless circle, accurate to a ten
billionth of a cubit in circumference.  In fact, I challenge you do draw an
absolutely perfect circle with just one pencil and a piece of paper (no
compass or other apparatus). You can't draw it, much less dig it.  For
something to be "circular in shape" it only needs to appear to the eye to
be a
circle.  It may have really been 30 cubits around.  My guess is that I gave
you piece of chalk and a parking lot and asked you to draw me a 10 cubit
diameter (about 15 ft) circle, then we measured the circumference, you
probably could not, unaided, do much better than they did, if you did
better
at all.


BRIDEAN
Actually, we probably could do better because 3 happens to be the
circumference of a regular hexagon inscribed in a circle.  Since a 
hexagon is clearly different from a circle it would seem that an 
imperfect circle with a circumference of 3 would have quite a noticable
eccentricity (if it were an ellipse).  I could calculate what the
eccentricity
would be but I would have to look up how to do it.  Perhaps some
engineers would volunteer here?

• Previous message: The value of pi
• Next message: The value of pi
• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]