🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3kl0s2$j8l@utdallas.edu>,  <son3776@utdallas.edu> wrote:
>DaveHatunen (hatunen@netcom.com) wrote:
>> In article <3kabpg$hlu@utdallas.edu>,  <son3776@utdallas.edu> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>
>> >Pi does not require a physical definition, but that doesn't negate or
>> >invalidate the physical definition that it *does* have.
>
>> It does NOT have a mathematical definition except to the mathematically
>> simple-minded who can not grasp the concepts required. All your
>> staements that pi has a physical defintion does not give it one.
>
>So what you're saying is that pi has no definitions whatsoever.
>Highly unlikely.

Arrgh. Did I really say that? I did, of course, mean "It does NOT
have a physical definition..."

>> >> As such, they are utterly different from Planck's constant, the gravitational
>> >> constant, etc, which are empirically measured quantities whose
>> >> numeric values are determined by choice of units.
>> >
>> >Pi was also empirically measured, as well as mathematically calculated --
>> >but other constants were mathematically calculated as well as being
>> >empirically measured.
>
>> You are totally missing the concept. You are also wrong: planck's
>> constant, and other such constants, do not have a mathematical
>> definition, while pi does. You are mathemnatically ignorant, and a
>> prime candidate for mathematically stupid.
>
>Actually it is you who is "missing the concept".
>
>Constants such as planck's constant, etc. were first realized through
>mathematical calculations (algebra, calculus, differential equations --
>if that's not math, then I don't know what is).  Later they were
>confirmed by experimentation.

Planck's constant was originally surmised by Planck as the only thing
that would avoid the Ultraviolet Catastrophe inherent in Boltmann's
equation for black body radiation. It was a kludge, pure and simple,
and he knew it. As such it was a very physical constant, and remains
so, as there is no purely mathematical way to derive it.

It was derived from already performed experiental data.

>However, there were other constants that were discovered experimentally
>(elementary charge, etc.) that were later found to fit nicely into
>equations (although with elementary charge it was because it was found
>alongside another unknown constant).

A number of previously derived physical constants turned out to be in
fact related. But they are not derivable without experimental data at
their root, while pi and the exponential are.

--


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