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How long is Britain's coast? Depends on your ruler.

Measure the coast in 100 km steps and you get about 2,800 km; in 50 km steps, 3,400 km. The shorter the ruler, the more inlets count, and the length grows without limit. Around 1951 Lewis Fry Richardson noticed Portugal gave its border with Spain as 987 km, Spain as 1,214 km. In 1967 Mandelbrot turned this into fractal geometry.

Useful: When two sources give different numbers for the same coast or border, often only the measurement scale differs.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

FraktaleKartografieMessen

Difficulty:

Question on this card

What happens to a coastline's measured length when you use a shorter ruler?

  1. It gets shorter
  2. It stays the same
  3. It grows without limit
  4. It approaches the true value
Show the answer

Correct: It grows without limit

Smaller inlets and headlands get counted; the coast is fractal.

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