Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

1984happens t1_j6gypgs wrote

Your username suggest to me that you did not forgot all of your Greek, so -since you are "partial to reading"- try this (slightly outdated - but longest ever) Greek word, from Aristophanes: "λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιολιπαρομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοπιφαλλιδοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών"

(o.k., yes... i copy-paste it... no way to write it myself!)

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eairy t1_j6gyeu6 wrote

> just air it later when the kids are in bed

The US doesn't have the concept of the 'watershed' like the UK does. I guess because of the multiple timezones issue.

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kumquat_repub t1_j6gxdkw wrote

Yes they will get longer…all of them will, but they will remain proportional to each other. The US has roughly 4.4 times as much coastline as China. If you make the scale interval smaller, they will both increase in length but the ratio will remain roughly 4.4:1

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kumquat_repub t1_j6gwms9 wrote

Yes whatever comparison method you choose will be arbitrary, but the smaller the scale of the measurements, the more accurate it becomes to find relative coastline lengths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline?wprov=sfti1

This Wikipedia article begins by explaining the coastline paradox but then states the measurements were taken at 1:250,000 scale. There are GIS tools that can calculate the lengths of coastline at this scale and add them up, giving you a very accurate relative list of coastlines…the key word is relative.

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