Recently a lot of videos have popped Up for me claiming that you can’t accurately measure the coastline of a landmass cause the smaller of a “ruler” you use, the longer of a measure you get due to the smaller nooks and crannies you have to measure but i don’t get how this is a mathematical problem and not an “of course i won’t measure every single pebble on the coastline down to atom size” problem”. I get that you can’t measure a fractal’s side length, but a coastline is not a fractal
In: Mathematics
1. Coastlines are not static. Anything you do measure, will be instantly invalid to a certain degree
2. The length of something depends on how you measure it. The longer your measuring stick, the harder it is to approximate curves. You cant measure the perimeter of a circle with a straight line.
1. If you use your ruler to measure a diamond shape from the circle, you will get one length. Reduce your ruler, and now measure the octagon, you will get a new longer length despite the circle not changing.
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