Spring Equilux Approaches ! Repent now !
Bruce Cheney
This is just a friendly reminder that the spring equilux, the day
when there are equal amounts of light and darkness, is approaching.
For those of you who participated in a discussion last year exploring
the reasons why equilux and equinox are not coincident, here is a
further question to ponder: According to the data shown below,
(Portland, OR 45 deg N, 122 deg W) sunrise and sunset for the spring
equilux, Mar 17, is at 6:20 (am and pm), for the fall equilux they are
at 6:02 (am and pm PST). Why are they different ? How come they both aren't
at 6:00 (am and pm PST) ? Fall equilux is close enough, but those
20 minutes in spring bother me.
Sunrise and Sunset at Portland OR
Pacific Standard Time
Mar. Sept.
DAY Rise Set Rise Set
AM PM AM PM
16 6:22 6:18 5:50 6:20
* 17 6:20 6:19 5:51 6:18
18 6:18 6:20 5:52 6:16
19 6:16 6:22 5:54 6:14
20 6:14 6:23 5:55 6:13
21 6:12 6:24 5:56 6:11
22 6:10 6:26 5:57 6:09
23 6:09 6:27 5:59 6:07
24 6:07 6:28 6:00 6:05
25 6:05 6:29 6:01 6:03
* 26 6:03 6:31 6:02 6:01
27 6:01 6:32 6:03 5:59
tekcrd!brucec ("The wheel in the sky keeps on turning...")
Chris Benenati
>
>According to the data shown below,
>(Portland, OR 45 deg N, 122 deg W) sunrise and sunset for the spring
>equilux, Mar 17, is at 6:20 (am and pm), for the fall equilux they are
>at 6:02 (am and pm PST). Why are they different ? How come they both aren't
>at 6:00 (am and pm PST) ? Fall equilux is close enough, but those
>20 minutes in spring bother me.
Perhaps we could start a petition intiative to get them legally changed,
so they both occur at exactly 6:00. (I confess to being inspired by
a bill was once introduced into the, I think, Tennessee state legislature
to get PI set to 3 so it would be easier to work with).
Mark Brader
Chris Benenati (chr...@dadla.UUCP) writes:
> Perhaps we could start a petition initiative to get them legally changed,
> so they both occur at exactly 6:00.
Hmm, why don't we just go to Saudi Arabian time? :-)
> (I confess to being inspired by
> a bill was once introduced into the, I think, Tennessee state legislature
> to get PI set to 3 so it would be easier to work with).
It was Indiana, it was 3.2, and that was not the reason.
The reason was that an innumerate member of the legislature
accepted a submission from a quack mathematician who thought
that pi WAS 3.2 and that all the textbooks were wrong. The
act passed in the state's House, came to public notice, and
was killed in their Senate.
Mark Brader
Matthew P. Wiener
In article <17600006@inmet> bri...@inmet.UUCP writes:
>> (I confess to being inspired by
>>a bill was once introduced into the, I think, Tennessee state legislature
>>to get PI set to 3 so it would be easier to work with).
>
>Lies, lies, lies. I have heard this story about PI many times now. Finally
>I ran across a book (the title of which I can't recall) which explained that
>little bit of folklore. (This is from memory, so don't quote me)
>It seems that faction A introduced a bill that faction B opposed (ain't it
>always the way?) Faction A was strong in congress as a whole but faction B
>was strong in the committee assigned to review the bill. So, faction B placed
>a rider on the bill such that PI will henceforth have the value of 3. Faction
>B figured that congress wouldn't dare pass it then. Wrong again. It passed.
>So it had nothing to do with ease of usage or anything else like that.
>Now doesn't that make more sense?
I've never heard that version. As I try to follow these stories, I think
it is apocryphal. Although a lot of stupid laws do get passed that way.
I remember _The Mathematical Intelligencer_ running an article not too long
ago with a discussion of the aborted Indiana attempt. One half of the
legislature mindlessly passed the law that someone introduced to please his
friend, whose geometrical description was so inept that no one could derive
a value of pi from it. The other half failed to pass it, barely, but only
because the newspapers heard about it and had a field day. Seems a free
press IS needed to control our legislators. :-) He also mentioned an
existing German law describing how to tax car engines that, if read literally,
implied an erroneous method for finding the volume of a cylinder and hence for
pi. Surprisingly, it gives a smaller tax this way. Perhaps that is why no
one is clamoring to get the right value in.
A weird book on pi with a long description of the Indiana fiasco is Petr
Beckmann _A History of Pi_.
ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720