For example on wikipedia for Switzerland it says the country has an area of 41,285 km². Does this take into account that a lot of that area is actually angled at a steep inclination, thus the actual surface area is in effect larger than what you would expect when looking onto a map in satellite view?

    • Deestan@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Due to the fractal nature of geometery, all they would have to do is use more fine-grained measurements. :)

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        Lets now measure all coastlines with the minimum increment possible, the planck length.

      • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        That would work for the perimeter, but not for the area.

        • Deestan@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It works exactly the same!

          edit: With the assumption that we now measure inclines of course. If measuring area of the flattened overhead projection (the current normal way) we don’t get fractal effect.

          If I go over our parking lot with a 1m^2 granularity, I get 100m^2. If I go with 1cm^2 granularity, I get 110m^2 because I catch the sides of the curbs, potholes, etc.

          https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/3DSnowflakeFractals/

          • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            With the assumption that we now measure inclines of course

            I interpreted your reply to njm1314 as meaning “we don’t need to measure inclination to cheat, we can do that by simply increasing our precision”

          • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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            4 months ago

            Fractals are self-replicating while surface area or coastline of a country are inherently finite. You could very accurately measure the surface area, but there’s no reason to do that.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      Do you think the holes left by digging the dirt would also count as increased area? Because it feels like it’d be a 2 for one deal

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Eff that and their primitive math: I want to see the Vatican truck in gravel of precisely the size of the increment, to become THE LARGEST COUNTRY ON EARTH, MUAH HA HAH!