Comment by neutronicus
14 years ago
Even then there are some dimensionless numbers that you can't get rid of (the ratio between the strength of the gravitational and coulomb forces being one obvious example).
14 years ago
Even then there are some dimensionless numbers that you can't get rid of (the ratio between the strength of the gravitational and coulomb forces being one obvious example).
Pi being another.
I wouldn't have said Pi was a physical constant - it's not like we actually measure circles to derive it empirically.
True, but it certainly is a dimensionless number that you can't get rid of (and that actually shows up in physical formulae, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law). Come to think of it, so is 2.
I guess if you tried to measure π by constructing circles, you'd actually be measuring the curvature tensor of space (which is an experimental observation), not π (which is just π).
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