Re: Pi and Alabama (Off Topic)

From: Priit Kull (tre@kodu.ee)
Date: Fri May 08 1998 - 09:10:20 EEST


Hi list

Of cource the Pi legislation in Alabama is a joke for the simple reason that
they have got the wrong value for it.

I am going to prove that the correct value for Pi is actually 2.

The reasoning goes like this. You take a unit circle with R=1. According to
the definition of Pi the length of such a circle's surcumference is 2Pi,
that is half of the circle = Pi and diameter=2. Now you draw a half of a
circle with R=0.5 on the half of the diameter and another halfcircle on the
other half of the diameter. The length of the first halfcircle is 0.5Pi. The
same goes for the other halfcircle. That means that the total length of the
bent line is equal to Pi. Now we do the same trick of deviding the R and D
by 2 and we end up with 4 halfcircles 0.25Pi length each, which once again
totals to 1Pi. Continuing in the same line (8*0.125Pi=1Pi, 16*0.0625Pi=1Pi
...) we can every time prove that the total length of the bent line is equal
to Pi. At last we end up with a straight line, which (look at the beginning
of the paragraph) is the diameter of the original unit circle and therefore
2. Ergo Pi=2.

Tell me where am I wrong. If you can not, you have to accept the truth and
rethink your life.

Best regards
Priit Kull
tre@kodu.ee

PS: The puzzle is not my invention, but the place where I read it did not
give any acceptable explanation about what is wrong with the reasoning. I
think I figured it out after four years of concentrated thinking and there
is nothing wrong with the reasoning, the problem is with the traditional
geometry. I also made a .STL file depicting the first four steps of the
iteration. It is actually a quite nice trinket with neverending Yin/Yang
pattern. I will not attach it as this is off topic and the file is 346KB.
Anybody wanting to have a solid proof of the fact that Pi=2 switch on your
RP machine and send me a message.

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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