blackstrap Posted August 19, 2011 Posted August 19, 2011 I'm not sure where to post this so if it needs to be moved that's fine. From a recent thread there was much discussion on PI in the Bible. I decided to come at the problem from a different direction. It didn't help much but was fun just the same. In 1 Kings 7 it talks about the molten sea and gives dimensions. One of the things said was that its capacity was 2000 baths.From wikipedia it says that 1 bath = 22 liters.2000 baths is then 44,000 liters or 44,000 cubic decimeters. From the other dimensions of 5 cubits radius and 5 cubits height( by the way,can anyone explain why the use of the word "his" instead of its when refering to the height?) it seems we are dealing with a hemisphere. I took pi as 3.1416 and came up with a WATER radius and depth for the 2000 bath container as 275.9 centimeters.If we add 7.5 centimters for the thickness of the container we get approximately 283.4 centimters for the exterior radius of the molten sea. This assumes that the water is right up to the brim. The scripture says that this is equal to 5 cubits. If so ,then the cubit must be about 56.7 cm long.This does not seem to match any cubit I can find.I would have supposed that the sea would be built using the sacred temple cubit,but that is much smaller. Now if we consider that the water did NOT go up to the brim but stopped short of the top by say 15 cm, then the container would have a cubit closer to 60 cm which is a cubit found anciently.( I will not drive you crazy with the calculations involved with this) All this seems to say that there was some number fudging going on somewhere,perhaps on my part.Any thoughts?
Zakuska Posted August 19, 2011 Posted August 19, 2011 If you take the inside radius of the bath as 3 as the Bible says and then add "a hand bridth" as the thikness of brass basin. You come up with a closer approximation of Pi than either the Assyrians or Egyptians of the time.Try this:
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