[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: It's Pi Day

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
It's Pi Day
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1237066996.shtml


   Today is Pi Day, [1]created about 20 years ago by a now retired
   physicist. As you may remember, p is the circumference of a circle
   divided by its diameter. It's approximately 3.14 and today is 3/14.
   OK, I get it. But what about the other fundamental constants?
   The base of natural logarithms (e) is about 2.718. Dates like 2/71 or
   27/1 don't work.
   The speed of light (c) is about 2.998 x 10^8 meters per second. Again
   2/99 or 29/9 doesn't fit, nor does rounding up to give 3/0 work.
   Plank's constant (h) relates the energy and wavelength of a photon,
   about 6.626 Joule seconds. Again, 3 digits won't work - 6/62 or 66/2 -
   but hey - 6/6 would. Oh wait, that's D-Day. If only there hadn't been
   that bad weather on June 5, 1944.
   The (Newtonian) constant of gravitation (G) that determined how fast
   that apple fell out of that tree centuries ago is about 6.673 x 10^-11
   (units upon request). Again, no suitable numerology works.
   One more, Boltzmann's constant (k) that relates pressure, temperature,
   and volume for an "ideal" gas, about 1.38 x 10^-23 (units - see
   Google). Ludvig Boltzmann will gain no further fame since 1/38 and
   13/8 are not dates, either.

References

   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day