Pi is wrong... really.

21 points by joshcorbin 15 years ago | 5 comments

sz 15 years ago |

Even worse is our definition of temperature... it should really be the reciprocal. The thermodynamic definition is:

1/T = dS/dE where S is entropy and E is energy

dS/dE has a nice intuitive ring to it "if I put a small amount of energy into the system, how will its entropy change", but since we declare that to be 1/T we allow crazy things like negative and infinite temperatures (these actually exist - and the negative temperatures are hotter than the positive ones).

jesusabdullah 15 years ago | |

On the other hand, most heat transfer relations are proportional to delta-T, so a T' = 1/T definition would make thing like

q = h (T_2-T_1)

become

q = h( 1/T'_2 - 1/T'_1 )

Perhaps unlike the case for pi, I think there's a good argument here for keeping temperature as-is.

URSpider94 15 years ago |

A similar (primary-source) article was posted about 5 months ago, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1449813.

PaulHoule 15 years ago |

pi = half, 2 pi = the whole...

what's more direct?

biggus_dictus 15 years ago | |

Did you read the article? So many fundamental equations become more elegant when pi is redefined in this way. Isn't pi/2 = half, pi=whole more direct?