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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