ASK THIS LAWSON TO BE A sole MEMBER OF THE NEXT SPACE SHUTTLE WHICH TRIP
WILL BE RECALCULATED WITH PHI AS 3. SEE WHAT HE WILLL DO.
If he accepts the offer we have a problem less. Pitty off the shuttle, but
sometimes you have to make sacrifices
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Olivier Langlois [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, February 04, 2000 10:15 AM
> To: Mersenne mailing list (E-mail)
> Subject: Mersenne: FW: what do you think about the authenticity of
> this?
>
> Is this story really ??
> Where is going our society ?? :-)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On
> Behalf Of Blu
> Sent: Friday, February 04, 2000 12:44 PM
> To: Protected Mode List
> Subject: OT: what do you think about the authenticity of this?
>
>
> > HUNTSVILLE, Ala.-NASA engineers and mathematicians in this high-tech
> > city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legislature
> > narrowly passed a law Monday redefining pi, a mathematical constant
> > used widely in the aerospace industry. The bill to change the value of
> pi
> > to exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee
> > Lawson (R, Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a
> letter-writing
> > campaign by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group.
> > Governor Fob James says he will sign it into law on Wednesday.
> >
> > The law took the state's engineering community by surprise. "It would
> > have been nice if they had consulted with someone who actually uses
> > pi," said Dr. Marshall Bergman, a manager at the Ballistic Missile
> Defense
> > Organization. According to Bergman, pi is a Greek letter used to
> signify
> > the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is often
> used
> > by engineers to calculate missile trajectories.
> >
> > Prof. Kim Johanson, a mathematician from University of Alabama, said
> > that pi is a universal constant, and cannot arbitrarily be changed by
> > lawmakers. Johanson explained that pi is an irrational number, which
> > means that it has an infinite number of digits after the decimal point
> and
> > can never be known exactly. Nevertheless, she said, pi is precisely
> > defined by mathematics to be "3.14159, plus as many more digits as you
> > have time to calculate."
> >
> > "I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational, and it
> is time
> > for them to admit it," said Lawson. "The Bible very clearly says in I
> Kings
> > 7:23 that the altar font in Solomon's Temple was ten cubits across and
> > thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round in compass." Lawson
> > also called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot be
> > calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the exact answer
> > could harm students' self-esteem. "We need to return to some absolutes
> > in our society," he said. "The Bible does not say that the font was
> > thirty-something cubits. Plain reading says thirty cubits. Period."
> >
> > Science actually supports Lawson, explained Russell Humbleys, a
> > propulsion technician at the Marshall Spaceflight Center who testified
> in
> > support of the bill before the legislature in Montgomery last week. "Pi
> is
> > merely an artifact of Euclidean geometry." Humbleys is working on a
> > theory which he says will prove that pi is determined by the geometry of
> > three-dimensional space, which is assumed by physicists to be
> > "isotropic," or the same in all directions.
> >
> > "There are other geometries, and pi is different in every one of them,"
> > said Humbleys. "Scientists have arbitrarily assumed that space is
> > Euclidean. A circle drawn on a spherical surface has a different value
> > for the ratio of circumference to diameter. Anyone with a compass,
> > flexible ruler, and globe can see this for themselves. It's not exactly
> > rocket science."
> >
> > Roger Learned, a Solomon Society member who was in Montgomery to
> > support the bill, agrees. He said that pi is nothing more than an
> > assumption by the mathematicians and engineers who were there to
> > argue against the bill. "Those nabobs waltzed into the capital with an
> > arrogance that was breathtaking," Learned said. "Their predatorial
> > deficit resulted in a polemical stance at absolute contraposition to the
> > legislature's puissance."
> >
> > Some education experts believe that the legislation will affect the way
> > math is taught to Alabama's children. One member of the state school
> > board, Lily Ponja, is anxious to get the new value of pi into the
> state's
> > math textbooks, but thinks that the old value should be retained as an
> > alternative. "As far as I am concerned, the value of pi is only a
> theory,
> > and we should be open to all interpretations." She looks forward to the
> > day when students will have the freedom to decide for themselves what
> > value pi should have.
> >
> > Dr. Robert S. Dietz, a professor at Arizona State University who has
> > followed the controversy, wrote that this is not the first time a state
> > legislature has attempted to redefine the value of pi. A legislator in
> the
> > state of Indiana unsuccessfully attempted to have that state set the
> value
> > of pi to three. According to Dietz, the lawmaker was exasperated by the
> > calculations of a mathematician who carried pi to four hundred decimal
> > places and still could not achieve a rational number.
> >
> > Many experts are warning that this is just the beginning of a national
> > battle over pi between traditional values supporters and the technical
> > elite. Solomon Society member Lawson agrees. "We just want to return
> > pi to its traditional value," he said, "which, according to the Bible,
> is
> > three."
>
>
>
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