• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Right, by my point is that your accuracy and precision are the same whether you are making a 1 meter length object or a π meter length object. Your meter stick is not accurate to the width of a hydrogen atom, either.

    But if we accept the precision of our manufacturing capabilities as “close enough,” then it is equally as close to exactly π as it is to exactly 1.

    In other words, to say we cannot make an object that is π meters is to say we cannot make an object that is any specific length.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Not to reiterate what other people have said here. But you can make an object 1 meter long by defining that object as 1 meter (hell, you don’t have to, but you can define 1 meter as the length that light travels in a specific amount of time or something silly). Then, to create something two meters long, you can have two of those one-meter lengths. To make something π meters long, you would need infinite precision, that is not true for 1 meter or even 1/3 as you mention later in this thread.

      There is no way to divide anything into exactly π length. There is an easy way to divide something into a number that can be expressed as a fraction, such as 1/3, or any fraction you care to come up with, even if it can be represented as .3 repeating.