this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Science Memes

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Meme of two women fighting while a man smokes from a pipe in the background.

The women fighting are labeled "mathematicians defining pi" and "engineers just using 3 because it's within tolerance"

The man smoking is labeled "astrophysicists" and the pipe is labeled "pi = 1"

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[–] SARGE@startrek.website 162 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

38 digits of pi can get the circumference of the visible universe to within a single hydrogen atom.

10 digits gets the diameter of the earth to within an inch.

Thank you for subscribing to Daily Spacey Math Facts

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 2 weeks ago

10 digits gets the diameter of the earth to within an inch.

Put another way, 10 digits means that your error will be caused by your imprecise model of the Earth's shape, rather than imprecision in the value of pi.

[–] Zkuld@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

And just two digits introduces less error than your average terrible model

[–] Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Wow, what do you have against models? I mean, I know that the trope is that they aren't very smart, but the same trope applies to firemen, so why pick on models?

[–] Zkuld@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

old man voice this must be that ragebait thing the youngsters are always talking about

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Hule@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Well, when they're burning..

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

out of curiosity... does that first fact account for the continued expansion of the universe?

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 27 points 2 weeks ago

It works at the current 93 billion light years of observable universe (46ish in every direction)

[–] Gustephan@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

The real comment mvp. You deserve every positive vote my post got

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Thank you O'Brian!
I hope you have finally done the DTR with Bashir...

[–] Abrinoxus@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago

Earth is shaped like potatoe pi accounts for that??