Asklemmy

44839 readers

908 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

102

What's something that's taken for granted that occasionally makes you think, wait wtf? (feddit.uk)

submitted 20 hours ago by manicdave@feddit.uk to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For example, Britain's national mapping organisation's brand is associated in our national consciousness with going to a small shop in a quaint village to get a map showing how to walk up a mountain. It's called Ordnance Survey. If that sounds like Artillery Research to you, that's because the project started because the king wanted to know how to accurately bomb Scotland.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

Even weirder is that the most efficient way to steer them is not in straight lines. Because the most efficient way to traverse a sphere is on a slight curve.

Get a string and pick two points along the equator on a globe. Stretch the string tight. It’ll bend into a slight curve above or below the equator (instead of following the equator directly) as you pull it, because the shortest distance between two points on a globe is not a straight line.

[–] pebbles@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

Has anyone ever sent you nudes cause of your name?

[–] juliebean@lemm.ee 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

of course the shortest distance is a straight line, that's literally the definition of a straight line.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The point is that you can’t follow a straight line on a globe, because that’s longer than taking a slight curve. If you take a straight line, you follow the entire circumference of the earth, but following a curved path allows you to avoid some of the width. Basically, the circumference means a straight line is more curved than a curved path.

[–] asret@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

Isn't it still a straight line from the perspective of someone travelling it? It just appears curved because you're looking at it from outside the curved surface.