Easy as Pi

This topic has 1 reply, 2 voices, and was last updated 3 July 2026 at 11:18 by Kiwi Bloke.

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2 July 2026 at 17:47 #854403
Michael Gilligan
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@michaelgilligan61133
This is not actually about Clocks or Scientific Instruments as such … but about one of the ‘impossible problems’ of antiquity.

The series of videos develops from first principles into Archimedes’ elegant method of approximation.

.

.

I found it fascinating and well-presented

… Others may, or may not !

MichaelG.
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3 July 2026 at 11:18 #854526
Kiwi Bloke
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@kiwibloke62605
Thanks, Michael, always interesting to follow your links. No wish to steal your thunder, however I thought the rather pedestrian video was going to be about the pi = 4 paradox, but it wasn’t… This is the paradox that if a square of side length = 1 is drawn around a circle of diameter = 1, it has a perimeter = 4, whereas the circle’s circumference = pi. Obvious. But if you draw the same ‘circle’, (equivalent to ‘folding in’ the corners of the square, and then the corners of the resulting figure, over and over), with the ‘pen’ constrained to move orthogonally, even as the steps in the approximate circle become vanishingly small, and the trace appears to be a macroscopically smooth circle, its perimeter obstinately stays equal to 4. Counterintuitive – at least for my aged and enfeebled brain…
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Easy as Pi

Easy as Pi

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