I’m no mathematician but I once found myself fascinated by Euler’s number 2.418(I can’t recall), the one, among many other things, indicates the multiplier of a given sum for continously compounded interest or exponential(?) growth. Obviously i can’t remember the details, but I do vaguely remember the “Secretary Game”, which went somewhere along the lines of, if you knew you had so many secretaries to interview the job, at what point should you take someone you “like” as a good bet given the amount of people left to interview. Anyway, Fibonacci ratio(s) are a close second. What do you think? I hope your more mathematical than me.
Well the Mersenne Prime Numbers are pretty interesting.
2 to the 6972953th power -1. These are the easiest type of number to check for primality on a binary computer so they usually are the largest primes known.
ultrafilter, how do you get the powers on your equation? More precisely what keys do you utilize to get the powers into the equation, or are you just cut and pasting?
It’s such an extremely fundamental value in the construction of the universe, and you can actually measure it quite well in a bloody high school lab. Blew me away, for sure.
Damn, I was going to say Planck’s. I love Planck’s. Whenever I can remember what it is (sometimes I can hold the basic concepts of quantum mechanics in my head for five minutes at a time before they slip away again.)
(Since Norman didn’t tell you, Planck’s constant defines the ratio between radient energy and wave frequence given off by, say, a light bulb, where E= hv, E being the amount of energy, v being the frequence and h being Planck’s constant (roughly .000000000000000000000000006624). And as should be obvious to everyone :rolleyes: this means that energy is emmitted in discreet packages, called quanta, rather than a continuous stream. And therefore…well therefore all kinds of things. My five minutes are up.)
I always like the idea that, up until the wild flucations in the value of gold in the last quarter of the 20th century, an ounce of gold would buy a suit of men’s clothing, whether it was a Brooks Brothers suit, full dress kilt & regalia, or jousting armor.
Not that I know of. I just wasn’t aware that G wasn’t well-known (especially given that we’ve already mentioned Planck’s constant and the fine structure constant).