what a long strange trip it's been

I asked Ryan (the resident genius here in Chez Wheaton, where our motto is "Mathus is Hardus") what the formula was to find circumference of a circle if you know its diameter.

"It's C = π⋅D" he said.

"Thanks," I said, "I can't believe I forgot that."

I got my calculator and put in 186000000 * 3.14

"Why didn't you remember that formula?" He said.

"Because that part of my brain doesn't get used as frequently as it once did, and even when it did get used, I had a . . . difficult . . . relationship with it."

584,040,00 came up on my display.

"Why did you want to know what it was?" He said.

"I just had this idea, and I wanted to know something . . ."

I typed in 58404000 * 34 and got back 19,857,360,000.

I looked up at him, unable to contain the huge smile that spread across my face.

"I've been riding this planet for almost twenty billion miles." I said.

"Woah." He said. "That's cool."

"Yeah," I said. "It really is."

Comments

[mhaithaca]

Dude, today's not your birthday! I think you're over twenty billion.

[Marie A.]

Who does remember that kind of thing unless your a mathmatician or in high school like Ryan! That is so awesome that he is going off to college next year, I know you must be so proud. I have a feeling he wants you to be proud too, and that is priceless.

[Craig Steffen]

No...Wil's birthday isn't until summer (according to IMDB), and he's about 8 months older than I am, which means...ye gods, I'm less than 2 years away from 35. Ack! Fortunately, I have a head start on my mid-life crisis and things are well in hand.

Oh...er...Yay Ryan! Billions and billions of miles. So what kind of calculator? Polish or non? (I assume non, given the math statement.)

[Kelly]

One of my favorite Monty Python songs just popped into my head...

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'..."

[Myshtuff]

Huh?

[porkerella]

I teach remedial math as well as band, so I guess I get to wear some kind of supreme nerd shirt. That, and the fact that I met my hubby on the math/science team in HS. :)

That having been said, I totally geeked-out on this particular blog entry. Now I must pull out my HP-48GX calculator that I got for my 18th birthday (Thanks, Mom and Dad!), and figure out the distance I've travelled on this planet. Thanks for the great idea!

[Andrew]

21,002,486,846.891, give or take.

BTW, let Ryan know that if he can remember the number 113355, he can remember an approximation for pi that's good to several decimal places. Split the number in half (113|355) and then divide the second half by the first.

355/113 = 3.141592920354
pi = 3.14159265359
diff = 2.66764e-07 = .0000084914%

[Rebecca]

Hey, Wil!

I hate to burst your bubble, but Earth is only an average of 93,000,000 miles from Sol. So the calculation would be 93000000 * 3.141592653589 (I love knowing Pi to twelve digits!) * 34 gives 9,933,715,970 miles that you've been on this ride.

[Rebecca]

There is a website for Pi to 10,000 digits, if you're curious. Point your browser (not this page - open a new tab!) to http://www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/math/pi.html

[Rebecca]

Oh, crap! 93 mil is the radius, not diameter. Everyone, consider me castigated! :)

[MandyDax]

Hehe, I made the same mistake as Rebecca for a couple of minutes. I was thinking, 186M, is that Mars, and why does he want that? Then I saw C=584M and got all confused b/c the Ringworld's about the same distance from its star as se are from Sol, and I know it has C=600M. Then I figured it out. We can both be forgiven, tho, because we use Firefox, maybe? ~_^Vm

[blooflame]

And assuming Wil occupies a space about 3 feet wide shoulder to shoulder (I haven't measured of course, but maybe I'm erring on the high side), Wil has swept out an area approximately equal to 3.147 * 10^14 square feet.

[blooflame]

The rest is left as an exercise for the student.

[Elizabeth]

But - and I'm sure someone will feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - isn't the trip not just the Earth rotating around the sun, but also the Earth rotating on its axis? It's not nearly as impressive a number as the other one, but it'll add a few hundred million to your total, pushing you over 20 billion.

Me, I'm old. I've got 22 billion and change. Weird.

[TitanKT]

Wait a minute, wait just a cotton-pickin' minute here!

"Mathus is hardus?" No, dude... if math was really hard for you, you'd be like me... wondering how the hell you'd figure out that problem in the first place. I'd have to seriously fire up some neurons to even know where to START to figure something like that out.

(And before you assume I am a retard, which I would not blame you if you did because when it comes to math, I very nearly am!!! I did just graduate from college summa cum laude and I did get As in college algebra AND two semesters of stats and am now taking quantitative analysis in grad school... and I'm not bragging either because even taking all that into consideration, I'm still a math moron. Truly.)

[Thumper]

My head just exploded...

[Insane_in_Huron]

Have to add in the movement of the Sol System around the Galaxy as well, so the trip has been a bit more than 20 billion miles.

[starshine_diva]

mmmmmmm... pi...

[pegret]

I tried this with my calculator (for my age, which is a lot older than yours, Wil). It didn't have enough digits to display the result.

[Rook]

Just over 26 billion here.

Ha! You're a light weight.

[Rook]

Oh, damn, I just gave you my age there, didn't I?

[Crissie]

The only reason to have kids around the house...for the equations that one has already forgotten years ago!

[Lee]

Porkerella,

The ultimate t-shirts for your status:

http://www.questionablecontent.net/merch.php

I say Math is Delicious!

[Kevin]

Wil

You n I have been around this big ol blue marble for about the same time... I got a few months on ya though. Funny thing about my bday... it was mentioned on last weeks HEROES....April 24. That it was cool personally. See ya Tuesday night in the poker room!!

[Callistan]

Hm, well if you accept WMAP's estimation of the rate of expansion of the universe (around 71 kilometers per second per megaparsec, aka the Hubble Constant) then... well, it depends on what you use as your point of reference.

Maybe 20 billion miles is the better answer. ;)

/dork