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You might think that if you've never tried it. But how do you get a giant circle on the ground in the first place? I mean, sure that giant circle you've drawn t
by breadbox 12y ago
You might think that if you've never tried it. But how do you get a giant circle on the ground in the first place? I mean, sure that giant circle you've drawn there looks circular, but how do you know that it is? Normally you'd measure it and verify it, but the whole point is that you're trying to use this circle to determine what those verified measurements ought to be in the first place. Even a hairsbreadth misshapen circle is going to give you wrong numbers. No, there's no comparison to finding a precise mathematical formula and exploiting it.
- willvarfar 12y agohttp://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-draw-a-circle-with-string/ http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-draw-a-circle-with-st... or is that too obvious?
- ColinWright 12y agoDo you really think you'll get six digit accuracy with that?
- oh_sigh 12y agoDepends how long your string is.
- marcosdumay 12y agoAlso depends on a ruler marked with 6 digits of accuracy.
- mturmon 12y agoMaking it longer will not fix the problem. The longer the string, the more it stretches. Replace it with a rod. The longer the rod, the more it sags.
- breadbox 12y agoNo, that's not too obvious. As has already been pointed out, you're going to need a circle the size of a building if you want to get more than 2-3 digits of precision (assuming that you can make your measurements with millimeter accuracy). How are you going to verify that your inscribed circle has no serious imperfections? Try making a building-sized circle on the ground using string -- it will be off of true by much more than a millimeter, I assure you.
- foobarian 12y agoAt one point doing some field experiments I needed to measure out a large distance very precisely, and found that using construction measuring tape (the fiber glass kind from Home Depot) has problems because of stretch. And really any kind of material will have enough elasticity to cause problems for long measurements. I ended up making a tensioner to ensure I always took the measurement at about the same force. Getting high precision gets complicated and expensive real fast!