From: Ted <ted@...>
Date: 2002-12-12T04:26:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Proper Type for Dollar Amount

Some references:
c = (2.997 924 562 +/- 0.000 000 011) * 10^^10 cm/sec
Misner, Thorne, Wheeler, "Gravitation", 1978;

The value is precisely
c = 299,792,458 metres per second
Wikipedia

I went to a scientific constants page and clicked on the link for the 
speed of light. Here's what I got: c = 2.99792458*10^8 m s^-1. 

I believe that the first value is prior to c being "legislated" to 299,792,458 m/s.

> Mark Probert (probertm@nortelnetworks.com) wrote:
> 
> > Interestingly, there are a bunch of rational approximations
> > for irrationals that allow you to do more "serious" math
> > using scaled integers:
> > 
> > const      ratio            error
> > ------     -----            -----
> > pi         355/113          8.5e-8
> > sqrt(2)    19601/13860      1.5e-9
> > sqrt(3)    18817/10864      1.1e-9
> > e          28667/10564      5.5e-9
> > c          24559/8192       1.6e-9
> 
> Ah, but c is exactly 300,000 kilometers per second*, if you use metric,
> its not a problem!
> 
> * in a vacuum
> 
> -- 
> Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
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> 
>