Famous numbers

Nominal, cardinal or ordinal, several numbers are often instantly (or eventually) recognisable. So without peeking, who can identify the three below?

[b]22/7

46664

149,597,870.7[/b]

Rigil

Pi
Nelson Mandela’s prison number
My bank balance

Are you single?

;D

Unfortunately not.

The third number is the conversion from AU to km.

(They lied to you at school. 22/7 is not π. It’s a rational approximation to π that already fails at the third decimal. π is a transcendental number which means it has no finite expression involving only rationals and/or surds. A better rational approximation is 333/106. An even better one is 103,993/33102.)

2.718281828459…

½ (1+√5)

7.29735×10–3

6.022×1023

0.577215664901…

299,792,458

As the man said, no peeking.

'Luthon64

2.718281828459…

½ (1+√5)

7.29735×10–3

6.022×1023

0.577215664901…

299,792,458

  1. e^1

  2. No idea

  3. alpha, cant remember the name.

  4. Avogadro constant

  5. no clue.

  6. Speed of light in vacuum (m/s)

Here is a few extra.

8.314

9.8066

6.62608 x 10-34

1.602177 x 10-19

½ (1+√5)

The golden ratio.

Wild guesses:

6.62608 x 10-34

mass of a neutrino…

1.602177 x 10-19

and electron? The second one rings a bell along those lines…

Approximation of pi.

46664

Madiba.

149,597,870.7[/b]

Astronomical unit.

Well those are my guesses. Lemme scroll down and see if I was right. :slight_smile:

All correct. (No. 1. is the base of the natural, or Napierian, logarithm.)

BoogieMonster got that one right. It’s the exact expression of the Golden Ratio, φ.

Yes, the symbol commonly used for this physical constant is α. It’s the fine structure constant.

A tricky one, this. I won’t reveal it yet in case someone would like to guess. (Hint: It comes from number theory. Its decimal and continued fraction expansions are both aperiodic but it is not known whether the number is algebraic or transcendental.)

That’s the gas constant (in SI units).

The standard value of g (in SI units), the acceleration due to Earth’s gravitational field at mean sea level.

Planck constant (in SI units), the basic unit of energy quanta in QM.

Unit of electrical charge, Coulombs.

Two more, both around 4:

4.669201609…

4.186

'Luthon64

Is it the Riemann convergent thingy?

Rigil

Well, it is the value to which a particular expression converges but Riemann is not associated with it. Another very famous mathematician is.

'Luthon64

4.186 - Heat capacity of water.

4.669201609… - The heat capacity of slightly more water … :smiley:

A few more from pop culture:
[b]
22

42

101

664[/b]

Catch-

42

Answer to life, the universe and everything.

101

Dalmatians? (I have actually never seen the film, or read the book, assuming there was a book in the first place.

664[/b]

No idea. I’m not THAT clued up on pop culture. :slight_smile:

More from popular and semi-popular culture:

1984

1000 000 000 and 1000 000 000

2001

Not bad, not bad at all! “101” has several associations, as Google will instantly reveal. The 101 Dalmatians (1956) - which was soon followed by the classic Disney movie - is certainly one. Its also used in denoting a basic, general course in some subject or the other, such as Psycology 101.

664[/b]
No idea. I'm not THAT clued up on pop culture. :-)

664? Why, that would be the neighbour of the beast. :wink:

Ok, yours:

1984 - A George Orwell dystopian novel. I think the term “Big Brother Watching” was coined somewhere in it’s pages.

1000 000 000 and 1000 000 000 - not too sure … might be from a song by Tori Amos.

2001 The Stan Kubrick flick.

Rigil

If you have not read it, you should. Everyone should. And coming from someone who very seldom reads any fiction, that says something. :slight_smile:

[b]1000 000 000 and 1000 000 000[/b] - not too sure ... might be from a song by Tori Amos.

Hmm, I notice now I actually kind of screwed up the phrase. It should more properly be 1000 000 000s and 1000 000 000s.

A few more:

57.295…

1642

1652

1859

Milliards & Milliards: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, a 1996 book by Barry Sagan, Carl’s lesser-known twin brother who, separated at birth, grew up in the UK. :wink:

Radians-to-degrees conversion factor for angles. (Also, a good Celsius temperature at which to set your geyser.)

Isaac Newton’s birth year (according to the Julian calendar; the Gregorian one was not yet in effect in England at that time).

The year Jan van Riebeeck arrived in Cape Town. (Had a school child’s help with this one. Early SA history is not our strong suit.)

Publication year of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

'Luthon64