I don’t think there is a measuring tape long enough…
In: 3
One way is to put a stick in the ground, look at the mountain past that stick and mark where the summit and the base of the mountain were on it. Then measure the length of the stick between the two marks and multiply it by the ratio of the distances from your eye to the mountain and to the stick. The result would be an approximation of the mountain height. Obviously actual scientific methods are somewhat more sophisticated, but this one works too.
Edit: calculating the height of the mountain relative to sea level (as such things are usually cited) requires adding the elevation of the base of the mountain.
I’m pretty sure they measure it in relation to sea level. As in so many feet above sea level (for US). I’m assuming they use like air pressure or something similar to measure it.
Edit: did some quick googling and found out that barometric pressure is indeed how most altimeters work, but there are GPS altimeters that measure height by triangulating from different satellites.
Lots of triangles.
Going back to high school geometry, if you have a line segment of known length and two angles, you can use that to construct the resulting triangle accurately. So what people did for a long time is they would measure out a straight line along a flat path – often a major road. Then, they would use that bit and find another point they could make a triangle to, and measure the angles. Now, with a third point, they could get more points by measuring the angles from two known points – and they could keep going until one of the points was the top of a mountain.
It would be easier to explain this with a picture.
You can measure it in 3 different ways:
* From sea level
* From the mountain base (which can be below sea level)
* Longest distance from the center of the globe
Generally, sea level is used but be aware it is important to define also which sea level as this varies from country to country (and even from area to area within a large country).
(The jokes of railway/tunnel constructions meeting in the middle but with different heights were real.)
Depending on which method you use, you will get different answers for the question “What is the highest mountain?”.
Answer: It is Olympus Mons, which is located on Mars. 🙂
Latest Answers