- PiDay.java
As we saw, the error when we get out to 14 decimal places is pretty small. In fact the difference is about 1/500th the thickness of a hair!
The International Space Station is actually one of Nasa’s closest satellites. What if we look at Nasa’s farthest satellite?
Voyager 1 is the farthest Nasa satellite, currently around 14 billion miles out (You can get the exact distance here: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/) This makes the diameter of the orbit about 28 billion miles.
For this exercise, calculate the error for the Voyager 1 satellite. You only need to change your diameter, however 28 billion is a big number. There are 2 ways you can enter it in. The first is as a double, with a decimal point. The second is as a long value, where you add a capital L at the end of the number.
Try both. Are your calculations the same? How big is the error at 14 decimal places? Do you think it is acceptable for Nasa to use only 15 decimal digits of Pi?
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