7 Mar
2021
7 Mar
'21
10:16 a.m.
I'm pretty sure people knew the value of PI before 1611, when the
Authorized Version was published, and that people had a pretty good
idea when the event described in 1 Kings 7 happened, a bit
before 900 BC. They used 3.1605 for the ratio in that time, I believe.
The values in the Bible are as one would explain to someone in conversation
about something else. If I said something was 10 feet across and 30 feet around
in normal conversation, an error of a foot and a half would be close
enough. When buying material, I use 4 as PI and trim to fit.
Brantley.
On Mar 6, 2021, at 6:58 PM, Bakul Shah
<bakul(a)iitbombay.org> wrote:
On Mar 6, 2021, at 1:22 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Andy Kosela wrote:
From the Kings James Bible
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1392613
1 Kings 7:23
[...] and that is akin to trying to define the
value of PI to be 3."
Urban myth.
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one
brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of
thirty cubits did compass it round about.
There seem to be various explanations for the above but perhaps it is the genesis of the
common “define the value of pi to be 3” idea?