[Tfug] Happy Pi Day everyone!

[Adrian]

On Thursday 15 March 2007 22:29, Bowie J. Poag wrote:
> I remember reading something somewhere that after the 200th digit or so, 
> Pi becomes superfluous because at that point, you have a granularity 
> higher than the smallest base distance in physics (1 angstrom?) ...In 
> English, with that degree of precision, you could plot the location of 
> every particle in the universe without overlap. It hurts my head. :) I 
> don't recall the exact description, but it's something like that.
> 

Well... I suppose that all depends on your point of reference. 1 angstrom is 
0.1nm (100picometers, 1*10^-13km), not the smallest distance by far, but 
roughly the size of the smallest atoms.

The earth is roughly 12756km in diameter, c=2*pi*r, making the circumference 
of the earth ~40074km. Or roughly 4*10^17 angstrom... So by my calculation 
(for give me if I screwed up here somewhere, its late), that makes the 
difference in circumference on the 17th place of pi roughly the diameter of 
an atom.

Even at the size of the galaxy, 100,000 lightyears, the 31st digit of pi is on 
the order of 1 angstrom difference in circumference.

Adrian