I don’t think there is a measuring tape long enough…
In: 3
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.
Latest Answers