As far as the eye can see
The Earth has a radius of 4000 miles. You are standing on the shore line and can see the horizon with your eye's that are at a height above the water of 5 feet, 3.36 inches.
How far is the horizon from your eyes?
How far is the horizon from your eyes?
Labels: SharedPuzzle
posted by Ragknot at
5:55 PM
10 Comments:
5 feet, 3.36 inches is 0.001 miles.
So the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle is 4000.001 miles. The radius of the earth and the distance from the observer to the horizon form the other two sides.
Pythagoras will tell you that the distance to the horizon is 2*(sqrt2) miles, or 2 miles and 1458 yards.
2.828 Miles from the eye to the tangent of the earth's radius (horizon line)assuming you are lookin to a place with the same elevation.
Drake
the distance between your eye and the ground (5 ft whatever) is a very very small fraction as compared to the distance that your eye can see.
The horizon is nowhere close to the radius of the earth because no eye can see that far. It's just an imaginary distance.
For all mathematically ideal purposes, it would be whatever the other answers have said.
its around 10k yards. just a thumb rule used/learned in the navy, the horizon is 10k away when judging distance of other vessels. I dont remember the exact distance though.
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Would it not be 5 feet, 3.36 inches? You are technically standing on someone's horizon.
The range you can see is about three miles to the horizon - a little bit further if you are catching sight of the mast of a ship or a mountain just over the horizon,
Curiously, if I remember correctly, a person in an airplane can only effectively see the things 10 to 11 miles away.
I suppose, as Einstein noted, everything is relative.
We must consider the effect of miniscus, must'n we?
i'm just shooting from the hip, but i think it's 16 miles... i may have heard that somewhere
not very close
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