Spent last holiday by the sea. Standing on the beach and looking over the sea, you could perfectly see the curvature of the earth. You could see the ships sailing ‘on’ this bulge, already half ‘behind’ the horizon. Now I wondered how many miles this horizon is from the person standing on the beach.
Answer
Best,
Tables exist to know the distance from the horizon on earth, some examples:
eye level : distance horizon
———————————-
1.0 m: 3.7 km (+/- eye level of a child)
1.7 m: 4.8 km (+/- eye level of an adult)
7.0 m: 9.8 km (+/- eye level of an adult + dike height)
35 m: 22 km (+/- height of apartment in Belgium + dike height)
100 m: 37 km
200 m: 53 km
300 m: 64 km
400 m: 74 km
500 m: 83 km
the most commonly used formula to calculate this is:
distance = square root of 13 times the eye level
since ships can be several tens of meters and windmills several hundred meters high, you can see them much further away
Sincerely,
Answered by
ing. Mario Wyns
Computer Hardware Electronics Assembler Microcontrollers Interfacing Light Technology
Brothers De Smetstraat 1 9000 Ghent
http://www.odisee.be
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