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Pi in the sky

Post 1

Recumbentman


I have been googling in a desultory manner, and arrived at the surprising information that someone has expanded the irrational (nay, transcendental) number Pi to a trillion decimal places. How much of your bookshelf would that fill, I wondered.

Well a large novel (a Harry Potter for instance) contains around a million characters (we're talking about letters and symbols here, not fictional persons). So a billion integers would fill a thousand books, and a trillion would fill a million books.

My bookcases currently hold something in the region of a thousand books, so a thousand houses like mine could house all the books of pi-to-a-trillion. Ten streets like mine. Of course a decent library such as Trinity College's in Dublin would house some five million books, so they could take care of five copies, if they held nothing else.

It is hard to visualise large numbers, but there are some vivid visual images available. In 1981, when the US national debt had reached its first trillion dollars, Ronald Reagan said: "A few weeks ago I called such a figure, a trillion dollars, incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high."

Of course there is no such thing as a thousand-dollar bill, so some people speak instead of a stack of dollar bills 67,000 miles high. But then, where does 67,000 miles get you?

In 1938 (that long ago!) a schoolboy came up with the name 'googol' for the number 10^100 (or 10e100) -- ten to the power of one hundred, that is a one followed by a hundred noughts. It's easy to write that out as a plain number: it takes just a two lines of text, or one if you write small enough.

But a googolplex, that's ten to power of one googol: you can't write that out in zeroes at all, because there isn't enough paper in the world, or, put it another way, you can't write small enough. In fact, even if you could inscribe a zero on one atom, there just aren't that many atoms in the observable universe.


Pi in the sky

Post 2

Metal Chicken

Those numbers are mind-bogglingly big.

I guess my PI T-shirt with the letter printed using the first few hundred digits of pi wouldn't even fill the first page in the first book in the first house in the first street.

MC


Pi in the sky

Post 3

Phil

A few hundred, a few thousand, nearly four and a half thousand.


Pi in the sky

Post 4

Sol

I must say that I approach big numbers like that the same way I approach big geography. I pretend they don't exist.

Some good examples there though. You actually had me visualising it.


Pi in the sky

Post 5

Felonious Monk - h2g2s very own Bogeyman

Do you know what the biggest number you can write with three digits is?
It's 9^9^9 (nine to the ninth power of nine). The visualization powers of my poor brain give up after about 1000.


Pi in the sky

Post 6

The Researcher formally known as Dr St Justin

I've got a copy of this poster up in my classroom: http://unihedron.com/projects/pi/index.php

It's printed on nine A4 sheets (in a 3×3 configuration, in case you were wondering), and the 'background' digits are still tiny... All 350,390 of them.


Pi in the sky

Post 7

Recumbentman

Phil, that's an enigmatic response: "A few hundred, a few thousand, nearly four and a half thousand."

I wondered was it a quote, but google only returns this here conversation when you enter it between quotes.


Pi in the sky

Post 8

Phil

It was a reply to Metal Chicken in response to her underestimate of the number of digits on her pi t shirt, that's all. No red kipper flying at midnight type of code phrase at all.


Pi in the sky

Post 9

Recumbentman

Not 'My hovercraft is full of pie' smiley - biggrin


Pi in the sky

Post 10

Phil

No. Not even 'I am full of pie (but my postillion is not)'

As an addition to MC having a t shirt with Pi on the front, I have one which proclaims a most grand phrase 'Pies are nice' smiley - smiley


Pi in the sky

Post 11

Recumbentman

Fancy a fly pie?


Pi in the sky

Post 12

Phil

If only there were a decent little bakery here in Manchester city centre to get one from smiley - smiley


Pi in the sky

Post 13

Recumbentman

smiley - flan


Pi in the sky

Post 14

Phil

smiley - nalf


Pi in the sky

Post 15

Recumbentman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HBDnpu5Bl4


Pi in the sky

Post 16

Phil

smiley - ok

Or possibly

http://www.salford.gov.uk/ecclescakes.htm

or even more likely for me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flies_graveyard


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