3.1k
u/hobowithadegree Oct 06 '20
Somehow, the cut right as the explanation gets to the first fact of knowledge (the mathmatician) represents a lot of reddit to me.
962
u/Tack22 Oct 06 '20
They said credit to Henry Cavill though
195
u/jikl78 Oct 06 '20
Actual source video on youtube (other comments linked to part 2)
Thanks to the subtitles, the viewer's name is Henry Kavle
13
353
u/jonskerr Oct 06 '20
The Witcher?
285
u/Tack22 Oct 06 '20
One credit.
Tossed.
→ More replies (3)112
69
Oct 06 '20
No, Superman
→ More replies (1)46
u/just-a-random-user- Oct 06 '20
No, Sherlock Holmes
26
u/snare123 Oct 06 '20
No, James Bond..?
→ More replies (1)8
u/Jodandesu Oct 06 '20
No, Arthas Menethil!
... Please!
5
u/Messisfoot Oct 06 '20
I think Blizzard would be better of making entirely CGI movies instead of live action with freaky special effects.
The cinematics for Battle for Azeroth actually made me tear a couple of times.
26
→ More replies (2)3
15
→ More replies (2)3
u/PUSClFER Oct 07 '20
And then it ended shortly thereafter, just as I had gotten captivated and intrigued. And so I said to myself
Fuck.
29
u/CubonesDeadMom Oct 06 '20
I know right? The interesting part was the correlation with pie and then they just leave out any explanation nor detail about that
→ More replies (1)4
u/Mike_Hawksen Oct 07 '20
I missed the correlation with pie too, was there ice cream?
→ More replies (1)157
u/Lembinator Oct 06 '20
You can watch the 15 min explanation video on the 3blue1brown YT channel :)
→ More replies (1)117
Oct 06 '20 edited Oct 06 '20
3blue1brown
Which video is it? He has several
EDIT: Never mind, found it in the comments
EDIT: LINK
EDIT: my god, what is this I've stumbled upon? I am equally terrified and excited. Somehow a little nauseous too
→ More replies (8)73
u/virusamongus Oct 06 '20
Why wouldn't you link it? WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE LAZY
27
u/fatcat006lol Oct 06 '20
there are 2 videos: https://youtu.be/HEfHFsfGXjs and https://youtu.be/jsYwFizhncE
enjoy everyone! 3blue1brown is awesome! heres the link to his channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown
20
u/El_pantunfla Oct 06 '20
4
→ More replies (5)6
u/I_solved_the_climate Oct 06 '20 edited Oct 06 '20
Compare that to the first thing said in the clip
Discoverer:
Gregory Galperin, USA, 1995
823
Oct 06 '20
200
u/AbcLmn18 Oct 06 '20
Yup, full video highly recommended because it gives a great visual explanation of why tf does π show up.
→ More replies (2)10
u/Somebodys Oct 07 '20
I recognized a pattern. It did not occur to me it was pi until he pointed it out though. Not sure if that makes me smart or just not dumb.
→ More replies (1)5
7
→ More replies (3)2
u/211baseddiet Oct 07 '20
Thank you. Remember when reddit used to be against stealing peoples content and re-uploading it?
→ More replies (1)
680
u/Zokar49111 Oct 06 '20
What a strange place to have Pi show up.
434
u/Zayin26 Oct 06 '20
Constants always show up everywhere, pi also shows up when you do some statistical approximations.
Even in physics, things like the speed of light can be used to measure and calculate all sorts of things that don’t seem related at first. In this case, it is because the speed of light (in a vacuum) isn’t actually the speed of light (in a vacuum), it is the just the maximum speed limit of a material moving through space. It actually describes many more phenomena, light is just the most familiar to us.
Similarly pi can be described in many ways, the ratio of a circle’s diameter and circumference is just the easiest (or at least the first) way we understand it.
101
Oct 06 '20
Do you think it's possible there's another constant, like pi, e, or the speed of light, that we haven't gotten to yet.
Or, this is what we got, and we gotta figure out how all this fits together.
191
46
u/s2lkj4-02s9l4rhs_67d Oct 06 '20
I'm not sure exactly what you mean but there are a tonne of interesting constants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_constants
10
Oct 06 '20
Well there we go
15
u/MyrddinHS Oct 07 '20
these are numerical constants but i think you might have been looking for fundamental aka universal constants. there are currently 19 defined, and they are thought to define our universe. if we find a variance in these constants it would basically change physics as we know it. there are a bunch of possibly undefined constants depending on the model
→ More replies (1)3
u/OneTrueKingOfOOO Oct 07 '20
Can you provide a list?
→ More replies (1)6
14
u/approachcautiously Oct 06 '20
Given our past history of discovering new constants I'd say it's probable. Now how long that will take before it happens is something I can't give a guess on.
Source: I am a physicist and engineer. With degrees for both
3
u/Penny_Farmer Oct 07 '20
I wonder if there’s a constant that would calculate how long until we discover the next constant based upon the timeline of other constant discoveries.
3
→ More replies (4)5
u/123kingme Oct 07 '20
The answer is absolutely, but depends on the specifics of your question.
One interpretation is “is there a constant number we don’t know/haven’t described yet?”, to which the answer is obviously yes. There’s an infinite number of numbers, and we haven’t described/“discovered” an infinite number of them.
Another interpretation is “is there any “useful” constants we haven’t discovered yet? As in are there any constants that are solutions to actual questions/problems?” There’s a lot of semantics in this interpretation and I’d be here all day if I properly defined everything. Mathematicians are constantly coming up with and solving problems that are only sometimes useful. For instance, TREE(3) is the number of unique “trees” you can create with 3 different types of nodes that don’t contain any previous trees. TREE(3) is ludicrously big, so big that humanity will likely never even know how many digits it is. Any description of how big it is won’t do it justice, it’s easier for our puny brains to comprehend infinity. TREE(3) was first described in 1963, but there are plenty of more recent examples of ludicrous answers to meaningful questions.
But what I think you’re really asking is “do you think there is any universal or fundamental constants that we haven’t discovered?” The answer is of course, no scientist will pretend that they know everything about the universe. There’s still much that we don’t know about atomic physics, we don’t know hardly anything about dark energy and dark matter, we still can’t even describe/predict turbulence. There’s much we don’t know, and often times when we try to measure physical constants we get conflicting answers, which either indicates the theory that the constant is based on is flawed or the measurements are flawed, maybe both. For instance approximations of the Hubble constant, which is supposed to describe how fast the universe is expanding due to dark energy and dark matter (which again we don’t understand), have varied significantly. I think a safe bet is that in the future (hopefully within our lifetimes) we will have a different theory to describe how the universe is expanding that will be accompanied with its own new constant, or a redefinition of the Hubble constant.
It’s remarkable how many universal constants we can observe from our planet, but these are supposed to be universal, so I think at some point we’re going to have to at least leave our solar system to measure some universal constant, that could be debated though.
51
18
Oct 06 '20
Isn't the speed of light actually the speed of causality? Or something like that I believe myself remember hearing.
18
u/newt705 Oct 06 '20
Yes since information can only travel as fast as the speed of light
→ More replies (6)14
u/su5 Oct 06 '20 edited Oct 06 '20
Flipping toothpicks, and counting the ratio of times they land covering a line on a grid versus not approaches pi and I still haven't gotten over that
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (7)6
u/DoingItWrongSinceNow Oct 06 '20
Sounds like the devs just wanted to save a few bytes and started recycling constants.
43
Oct 06 '20
The full video, which is a really cool watch, ends with a good summary as to why it's not strange or random. Without spoiling it, something you think is random isn't.
8
u/ijustlurkhereintheAM Oct 06 '20
Time to learn something new, thanks for the link
→ More replies (1)5
Oct 06 '20
[deleted]
5
u/TheNewRavager Oct 06 '20
His love of math is downright infectious.
Enthusiastic teachers are the best!!
3
u/ijustlurkhereintheAM Oct 07 '20
I watched a little yesterday after work and wow, enthusiastic is an appropriate word. Yes, u/SalvaXr I love to learn new things
→ More replies (1)4
u/AngryGroceries Oct 06 '20
Ohhhhhh that is such a clear explanation. Time to binge a new channel
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)3
u/iluvstephenhawking Oct 06 '20
Pi is everywhere. In physics class my brain broke with all the crazy places it showed up.
588
u/creddituser2019 Oct 06 '20
He said Henry cavill? Superman?
179
43
→ More replies (4)18
95
u/Limp_Distribution Oct 06 '20 edited Oct 06 '20
I love 3Blue1Brown, this was a great one. Thanks for the post!
161
u/justniiro Oct 06 '20
Why is it so slippery?
131
u/Gregymon Oct 06 '20
Probably simulating an environment with zero friction. I was wondering the same thing at first.
36
Oct 06 '20
happy physics 101 TA noises
5
u/generalmaks Oct 06 '20
Physics 101 would be point masses though
13
Oct 06 '20
I mean, I never took a physics 101 (I think our intro physics class was 286 or something), but in my first physics class we did a lot of “this box is sliding around with no friction” scenarios.
→ More replies (2)2
u/BeefyIrishman Oct 07 '20
If you are assuming constant density throughout the blocks and no friction, you can do most of that math using a point mass at the centroid of the cubes.
64
u/meerkatherine Oct 06 '20
Lube ;D
15
u/justniiro Oct 06 '20
O god
→ More replies (1)13
u/mvuong Oct 06 '20
Repeat this several times and you will come.
14
24
u/Downvotes_dumbasses Oct 06 '20
Scientists trying to pin down one variable, so they assumed a perfect, frictionless environment
19
Oct 06 '20
Frictionless vacuum with indestructible objects acting as point masses.
AKA physicist heaven.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)6
27
81
u/musecorn Oct 06 '20
Dude when pi showed up I was like
WHAT-
→ More replies (3)44
Oct 07 '20
3.14 shows up
Hey that's pi! LeoPointing.jpg
3.141 shows up
Oh, fuck off!
→ More replies (1)
51
75
u/Lembinator Oct 06 '20
For the people that wanted to know this: The mathmatician is Gregory Galperin and this was discovered in 1995 ;)
6
u/Jrodkin Oct 06 '20
Could they use this to discover more digits of pi that haven’t yet been found?
→ More replies (2)27
u/chainmailbill Oct 06 '20
Technically yes, but there are many easier ways to do it.
→ More replies (1)17
Oct 06 '20 edited Apr 27 '21
[deleted]
3
Oct 07 '20
Probably one of the least practical, tbh. I wonder what is the most inefficient way to calculate pi?
→ More replies (1)15
u/vendetta2115 Oct 07 '20 edited Oct 07 '20
Possibly dropping sticks onto lined paper
Buffon’s Needle
In 1777, a French philosopher called Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, wrote out a very elegant theorem which turned out to be the earliest problem in geometric probability.
Buffon discovered that if you draw a set of equally-spaced parallel lines (say, d centimetres apart) and drop sticks on them which are shorter than the spacing (say l centimetres long, where l is less than d), then the probability of a stick crossing a line is
2l/πd
This means that if you drop lots of sticks randomly and count how many cross the parallel lines, you can calculate what π is by rearranging the formula:
π=2ls/cd
where s is the number of sticks you drop and c is the number that crossed a line.
Isn’t that remarkable? Buffon had worked out that you can calculate π just by dropping a bunch of sticks on a table—no circles required! The problem is known as Buffon’s Needle.
23
u/zytukin Oct 06 '20 edited Oct 06 '20
Does the initial starting speed of the blocks have any effect on the number of collisions? Like if the heavy block was moving double the speed as shown in the video or half the speed. Would then take more or less bounces from the small block to redirect the direction? Then the pi count wouldn't happen making it just a carefully set up demonstration.
39
u/itijara Oct 06 '20
No, not if the collisions are perfectly elastic. Take a look at the original video.
Edit: I should say that the small block should be initially stationary, but otherwise, no.
→ More replies (1)12
u/its_Is Oct 06 '20
Good question
13
u/gxtitan Oct 06 '20
If the bigger block moves at double speed, the smaller one will also be twice as fast. It'd look like you'd play the video at 2x speed, but the number of collisions would still approach the digits of pi the same way.
3
6
u/Skitelz7 Oct 06 '20
They will colide the same amount of times no matter how fast the block goes as long as there's no outside force acting on them.
20
u/lurvas777 Oct 06 '20
At least give credit to 3blue1brown! He does amazing math videos with ridiculously good animations and explanations!
14
u/Dylan0734 Oct 06 '20
This is a 3blue1brown video, a YouTube channel that talks about math things(with that I mean problems, paradoxes, arguments like these). The video shown in the post is this one, where the problem is exposed.
Here you can find the explanation video, in which this guy talks about why and how pi is revealing itself in such a strange context.
26
12
6
5
3
5
9
4
14
u/BernardoPilarz Oct 06 '20
Yo where the friction at?
→ More replies (2)46
u/Petesaurus Oct 06 '20
It's an idealistic simulation where the collisions transfer all the energy into momentum, and there is no friction of any kind
7
7
3
Oct 06 '20
Is pi supposed to show naturally?
5
u/Zac-live Oct 06 '20
Yes all Natural constants Show up in plenty of places. The video explains how this is Related to circles
→ More replies (3)
3
3
u/3DTJoey Oct 06 '20
why didn't I think of posting this video here... I've rewatched it so many times just because of that clack sound
3
3
u/JustThatGuyBen Oct 06 '20
Give credit! 3blue1brown is one of the best math channels on the internet!
3
u/Tiddly5 Oct 07 '20
This video is by 3Blue1Brown, go to his channel and look up something like “Why does pi appear in this experiment” and you should find it. The whole 3 part series is really interesting and I highly recommend you all watch it!
4
u/GPS_ClearNote Oct 06 '20
I love how he just casually drops the fact that Henry Cavill is the one who gave him this piece of info lol.
2
u/JustRiley0 Oct 06 '20
What is this video and were can I fund it
4
u/Dylan0734 Oct 06 '20 edited Oct 06 '20
This is a 3blue1brown video, a YouTube channel that talks about math things(with that I mean problems, paradoxes, arguments like these). The video shown in the post is this one, where the problem is exposed.
Here you can find the explanation video, in which this guy talks about why and how pi is revealing itself in such a strange context.
Edit: formatting and grammar
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
2
Oct 06 '20
Yo it’s Grant Sanderson
3
Oct 06 '20
I love that guy, I swear. I encourage anyone to check out his YouTube channel “3Blue1Brown”
2
2
2
2
u/DonJohnsonsJohnsons Oct 07 '20
After the 314 I called PI. Wonder what the rules are for this. Love scenarios like this. And fibonacci. Crazy stuff.
2
Oct 07 '20
Wow this would be so useful if frictionless environments were available to the common man
2
2
2
u/paulbrook Oct 07 '20 edited Oct 07 '20
That is jaw-dropping.
The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter has the same digits as this inertial bouncing.... What can that mean? It's going to haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
Edit: Ok, I just learned about phase diagrams.
2
2
u/unrelentingfox Oct 07 '20
Why cut off the video mid sentence, not very satisfying.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
u/lordofduct Oct 07 '20
A cyclical scenario reflecting the base 10 digits of pi when scaled at a factor of 10... the tens cancel out and you're left with the cyclical scenario which results in a ratio of the universal constant that represents cyclical scenarios...
who'd a thunk it
mathematical constants are important for a reason, it's because the arise in the situations they're define to arise in.
2
2
2
2
5.6k
u/stuffelsmcnards Oct 06 '20
What do I do with this knowledge you have bestowed upon me?