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Thursday, 3 May 2012

Approximations


http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/approximations.png

7 comments:

  1. Approximations, maybe, but not necessarily very mnemonic, are they?
    I mean, Avogadro's Constant was pretty much drummed into me at school, and 6.02x10^23 is a bit easier (for me) to remember than 69^pi^sqrt(5).

    (though, having said that, a lot of what was drummed in is no longer used, or defined differently at school, e.g. molar volume is no longer 22.4 litres at 273K and 760mmHg, it is 25 litres at 298K, which I suppose is nicer, because who wants to measure gas volume when it's that cold?)

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  2. Showing your age there - pi (or rather M_PI) has been defined in math.h for years!

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  3. More of an identity, rather than an mnemonic

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  4. A not-very-good approximation is that pi seconds is a nano-century.

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