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| Unit Circle |
 Title text: They're continuing to search for a square with the same area as the circle, as efforts to construct one have run into difficulties. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Constructed by an IMAGINARY NUMBER OF COMPASSES AND CURVED EDGES. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
A unit circle is a mathematical concept which is a circle whose radius is one (with no units). When doing math problems with a unit circle, all other distances are therefore in terms of the circle's radius: a line with length 3 is three times the radius, a line of length 1/2 is half the radius, and so on. This is very useful in many geometry problems.
This comic shows an expedition of some experts (White Hat, Ponytail, Miss Lenhart (the mathematician), Cueball and Megan) having located a "real unit circle": a physical object which somehow is this mathematical idea. Cueball is holding a set of vernier calipers, precise instruments used to provide an exact measurement of the unit circle. By measuring the "real unit circle", mathematicians could then provide its measurement in whatever ordinary unit they choose, such as centimeters or inches, to textbooks which describe the unit circle. The notion of defining a unit in terms of an actual physical object is actually quite reasonable, as the meter was officially defined as the length of a specific physical bar until 1960 and the kilogram was defined by the mass of a specific physical object until 2019. Doing so with the unit circle would be entirely pointless, however, as the entire purpose of the unit circle is to define mathematical relationships, which can be generalized to any unit, rather than being restricted to a given length.
The title text refers to the old geometry problem of squaring the circle, whereupon one starts with a circle with a known area - for a unit circle, π - and tries to create a square with the same area, traditionally using nothing more than an idealized compass and straightedge. Such a square would have edges measuring √π units in length, and once it was proven that π is a transcendental number, it was definitively known that squaring a circle is impossible. This causes problems for the comic's team of mathematicians, who wished to create such a square to go along with its unit circle but must instead rely upon finding one, presumably using the same approach they used to find this circle. (Note that a unit square, should one also exist, would have edges the same length as the unit circle's radius, and would not have the same area as either of the others.)
Transcript
- [White Hat, Ponytail, Miss Lenhart, Cueball, and Megan are standing in a field. White Hat stands behind Ponytail who is holding a notebook and taking notes while looking down at Miss Lenhart who is kneeling and holding her hands on a circular object with the radius marked on it. The radius is pointing away from her towards Cueball standing on the other side. He is holding a large vernier caliper-like measuring instrument with the two arms poised over the object ready to measure its diameter. Behind him Megan is taking a photo of the object with her phone turned sideways.]
- [Caption below the panel:]
- Math breakthrough: Dimensional analysts have discovered a real unit circle. Once they measure it, units can finally be added to all our geometry textbooks.
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