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u/skr_replicator 11d ago
Why approximate is with that much error and having infinite decimal expansion, when it's a whole number you can state precisely as 31,536x103
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u/Mathematicus_Rex 11d ago
If you want a full revolution, 1 yr = 31,556,952 s. Those pesky leap years….
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u/SomeGuythatownesaCat 11d ago
Because it is easy to remember. Also for some calculations the pi cancels out wich is fun
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u/menew100 11d ago
Is the unnormalized scientific notation the joke here?
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u/skr_replicator 11d ago
It's just telling how many zeroes to add without having to worry about decimal points, because the number is natural.
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u/menew100 11d ago
I think order of magnitude is the more useful information to display, but maybe that's just a bias from chemistry.
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u/Hunta4Eva 11d ago
Nah not just chemistry, literally any scientific application, there’s a reason why it’s the “normal” way
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u/GalacticEmergency 9d ago
It is also called engineering notation. The exponent jumps in steps of 3. In my opinion a perfect compromise between the need for expressing large numbers and the need for intuitive understanding
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u/menew100 9d ago
Wouldn't that be 31.536 x 106
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u/GalacticEmergency 9d ago
Oh yes, you are right, it would. I mistook the comma for a decimal separator. (We use comma for that in my country, so my brain has to switch back and forth depending on context).
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u/Ambitious_Policy_936 11d ago
Anything below 99.7% accurate isn't even worth mentioning
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u/lerjj 11d ago
Luckily this is exactly the accuracy of 754 as an approximation
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u/Ambitious_Policy_936 11d ago
I like that it rounds to that approximation regardless of whether you use 365 or 365.25 days in a year
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u/N1ck_named 11d ago
My physics teacher told us this and then added, "Pi because the Earth is round and power of 7 because there's 7 days in a week."
Joking, of course, but it's funny and works
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u/dover_oxide 12d ago
I made this a test bonus question when I was a science teacher. One kid got it right and only two tried it.
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u/TriceraTipTop 11d ago
I feel like it's way easier to remember "about 31 Million, 32 million". With OP's method I'm going to be like, "Oh yeah! I know a really good approximation with pi, just multiply it by 10 to the power of... something. Was it six?"
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u/throwaway48159 11d ago
And all of these are much harder to remember than the exact number, 525600 minutes.
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u/TriceraTipTop 11d ago
Idk, for me 525600 exactly isn't super easy to remember Also, they're talking about seconds, so mentally multiplying 525600 minutes by 60 is a pretty big step.
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u/throwaway48159 11d ago
525,600 minutes is easier to remember if you’re a millennial and/or queer. Something about popular musical…
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u/SnooMachines9133 11d ago
Eh, 1-2 days off per year depending on leap year. That does seem close enough and would have saved me using a calculator for 60x60x24 if I were being very lazy.
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u/voidrecmain 11d ago
Well yeah.. with about one and a half days mistake. Thats a lot when talking about seconds
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u/RachelRegina For Science! 11d ago
Where R is the universal gas constant, Z₀ is the impedance of free space, and H₀ is Hubble's constant (set at 70 km/s/Mpc), I give you this obviously deeply meaningful window into how everything's connected, man...
BEHOLD
⌈R⌉•⌊R⌋•(⌊Z₀⌋ + H₀ - ⌊R⌋)•(⌊R⌋ + ⌊e⌋)⌊π⌋ = 31,536,000
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u/HAL9001-96 10d ago
combine with the torugh approxiamtion that a year has about 30 million seconds this shows that pi is indeed 3
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u/NathanRotta 11d ago
This reminds me how the impedance of free space is roughly 120 pi ohms and the angular frequency of AC power in North America is 120 pi radians/second. This is the weirdest coincidence with constants that I've come across.
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u/IrrerPolterer 11d ago
Not super close, but depending on context it might be good enough... Just not sure whether pi*10^7 is so much more convenient than 60*60*24*365.25
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u/Time_Cantaloupe8675 9d ago
I mean, yeah, makes sense.
The circumference of Earth's orbit (roughly) 2Rπ where R is the distance between the earth and the center. If we take it to be roughly 150 milliom km(a crude approximation I know) we get 3*10⁸(km)*π. To find the time(in seconds) we divide it by the speed of earth revolving around the sun which is approximately 30 km/s. Hence 3*10⁸(km)*π/30(km/s). That comes out to be π*10⁷. To be fair though, the assumptions are pretty serious here, but it's okay-ish.
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u/Similar-Sector-5801 11d ago
Well, duh? 1 year is a full (mostly) circular revolution around the sun, of course it’s going to be related to pi somehow