"The sea was then cast; it was made with a circular rim, and measured ten cubits across, five in height, and thirty in circumference"
I Kings 7:23This refers to a large circular tank at the Temple of Solomon that held about 12,000 gallons of water.
Hat tip: History of Pi by Petr Beckmann
So, pi=3 to a first order engineering approximation.
ReplyDeleteI can live with that. :-)
If you look at Beckman's book, most ancient societies had a closer approximation, usually on the order of 3 1/7
ReplyDeleteEric:
ReplyDeleteWhen I need to get a close approximation of a circumference or circular area and I don't have my slide rule handy, I too use 22/7 for the mental arithmetic. Gets to within about 0.04%.
Frank