How does a lighthouse helps ships navigating?
In: Engineering
Apart from the stuff that is pretty self explanatory, which is that they are (mostly) built on land (or shallow ground), so you intuitively know you shouldn’t get close, there are a couple things to add: Paired with a compass (which is standard equipment on any ship) you can narrow down your position on a map to a line. The only missing piece of information you now need to completely locate yourself, is the distance, which you have multiple possibilities to measure. Either through direct ways, sonar(measuring the depth of the water under you and cross checking with a map), or supported by GPS. Also lighthouses have different sectors, where they (seemingly to you) flash their light in different time intervals. Passing these sectors and comparing and cross checking with a map, you can understand what exactly your position is and navigate safely from there.
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