Eli5 why the coastline paradox is a paradox?
In: 1301
One way to think about it is to look at pictures of the Earth from space. It looks like a perfect sphere. Spheres are smooth round objects, right?
Except we know it’s not a perfect sphere, because it’s a bit wider at the Equator when we measure more closely.
More than that, if we zoom in on the Earth a bit more, we might start to see the mountain tops. The mountains aren’t a smooth sphere, they’re jagged points.
And then we go a bit closer, and we see buildings and hills sticking out. It’s even less of a sphere. It’s all over the place.
Zoom in even more, you’ll see the potholes in the road. Even further, every rock, every imperfection in the dirt.
So each time you look more closely at the Earth it gets even less like what looked like a perfect sphere at the start. Let’s say we calculate the surface area of the Earth. If we calculate it as a sphere, we’ll get an estimate, but we’re missing out the mountains. They’ll add a bit. Maybe we can include the mountains, but then what about the hills? They’ll add a bit too.
The more accurate you get, the more detail you have to add into the measurement.
The coastline works the same way. The more closely you look at it the more imperfections there are to take into account that increase the total length.
Latest Answers