If I’m standing on the deck of a ship in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, how far away is the horizon?
From [url=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon[Wikkipedia.
Using a bit of simple Pythag, I get 16km to the horizon, assuming a height above the water of 20m, which seems a good guess for a decent sized ship.
That funny symbol in the formula is meant to be a radical. :rolleyes:
The formula I used was:
d=sqrt((6378+h)squared - 40678884)
where d is the distance to horizon and h is the height above the surface. All units being kilometres.
Comes up with 35.7km for 100m height, so that ties in with QED’s distances.
The Master answers: Are the north and south horizons not equally distant?