Engineer's comma
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| This page presents a novelty topic. It features ideas which are less likely to find practical applications in xenharmonic music. It may contain numbers that are impractically large, exceedingly complex, or chosen arbitrarily. Novelty topics are often developed by a single person or a small group. As such, this page may also feature idiosyncratic terms, notations, or conceptual frameworks. |
| Expression | [math]\pi/3[/math] |
| Size in cents | 79.840355¢ |
| Names | pi over 3, engineer's comma |
| Special properties | reduced |
| Harmonic entropy (Shannon, [math]\sqrt{nd}[/math]) |
~4.32957 bits |
| Comma size | medium |
Pi over 3, or the engineer's comma [idiosyncratic term ], is a transcendental ratio of 79.84 cents.
The name "engineer's comma" was proposed by Eliora. The naming reason is that in the STEM student community it is common to light-heartedly joke about how engineers round π down to 3.
Temperament
π/3 occurs in the Pitave system, which uses a an increase of frequency by a factor of π = 3.14... as an interval of equivalence. Tempering it out means that the pitave is equated to the tritave, 3/1.
Trivia
1 step of 15edo is a very close approximation of this interval.