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It might have been the Governor of Colorado who said if you laid a drape down over the state - and let it cover the mountains and valleys - and then stretched i
by anonu 6y ago
It might have been the Governor of Colorado who said if you laid a drape down over the state - and let it cover the mountains and valleys - and then stretched it out, it would be bigger than the state of Texas.[1]
So it got me thinking for a while what the "true size" of a country is if you were to stretch it out. A mountainous country or region would technically have a larger surface area.
I started thinking a bit about how you would go about calculating that. You would need some sort of topographical map and then run a bunch of surface area calculations (approximations) between topography lines. Sounds like a fun project but I never got around to look into it much..
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/02/615975703/not-my-job-colorado-gov-john-hickenlooper-gets-quizzed-on-2020 https://www.npr.org/2018/06/02/615975703/not-my-job-colorado...
- hvdfhbj 6y agoIt quickly turns into one of those almost but not quite fractal problems. By the time you get down to the scale of individual grains of sand, you are having to make some tricky calls. If this grain of sand is sitting on top of this other one, do we count the full surface area of the top grain minus the point of contact, or do we declare that the grain is not actually part of Colorado but merely a grain sitting on top of Colorado? Whoops, the grain moved while you were thinking about it. Then once you've classified every single grain as in or out, you get down to the subatomic scale. Perhaps you could define the surface in terms of a single electronic density isosurface, but you'd be choosing your isosurface somewhat arbitrarily.
- runeks 6y agoWell said. It’s the same problem you run into when measuring the length of a coastline. It has no “true” length.
- galaxyLogic 6y agoRight but mountains make it hard to travel. Whereas coastline, if you have lots of it you can have your house on the water not too close to the neighbor
- galaxyLogic 6y agoRight but mountains make it hard to travel. Whereas coastline, if you have lots of it you can have your house on the water not too close to the neighbor. And you can have more beach.
- jobigoud 6y agoMatt Parker from Standup Maths made a great video on exactly this subject a few weeks ago. "Does land area assume a country is perfectly flat?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtKhbbcc1Rc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtKhbbcc1Rc
- Wildgoose 6y agoI remember something similar being said about Korea because it is so mountainous.