The specific point is between Memphis, Tenneessee, and West Memphis, Arkansas. I’m making my way through Google hits at the moment, but if anyone has a better source I’d be glad to know it.
Thanks in advance.
Use google earth in satellite view mode and use the measurement tool.
Go to that point. Take a very long piece of string and have a friend hold one end. Swim across with the string. Watch out because the Mississippi River has deadly current and large ships in parts. Measure the string once you get to the other side.
Back in the day we’d use a nautical chart and a pair of dividers.
You whippersnappers don’t know how easy you have it.
:: releasing the winged, flame-breathing, etc. monkeys with orders to bring me **Shagnasty’s ** left kidney ::
- Measure the height of a tree on the bank.
- http://www.jimloy.com/geometry/tree0.htm
- Hi Opal!
I was just there, standing in Tom Lee Park, right on the edge of the river. If a best guess would suffice, I’d say it was about a thousand feet across.
Kind of the same thing from a probably apocryphal story: One of Napolean’s engineers was tasked to build a bridge over a river, and the first thing he had to know was how wide the river was. As he stood on the bank looking toward the other side, he lowered his cap’s bill until he could just see the far bank and nothing above it. He turned about face with the cap still lowered until he found a land mark just under his bill (if you know what I mean), and measured the distance to that. That was the width of the river.
Or you could just ask someone who lives around there.
I AM someone who lives around there.
As above, Google Earth. You do have GE on your computer, right?
Nope. My computer has suffered a catastrophic, water-related breakdown, obliging me to use the Public Library’s computers, which I cannot download onto.
This should work with google maps from within your browser.
Ah. That’s too bad.
Since you’re in a library, do you have access to any decent, perhaps local maps?
I’ve just gone to Google Maps, and the Mississippi River seems to vary considerably in width around Memphis. The narrowest part seems tobe where Interstate 55 and some railway lines cross on 4 parallel bridges, each of which looks to go about 3,000 feet from bank to bank.
I was WAY off! Maybe it was those Call-A-Cabs from Wet Willie’s distorting my depth perception.
At the point where the Harahan and Frisco rail bridges – and the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge carrying I-55 – cross the Mississippi, it’s almost exactly 2000 ft wide (according to Google Earth). This looks to be the narrowest point in the Memphis area.
ETA: Giles, there are three bridges – the “fourth” one is a shadow (note that it doesn’t line up with anything on land).
Actually, given that Skald has mentioned the use of the library, this might work pretty well.
Check the library for navigation charts (you may also be able to buy them at your local regional Federal Building (or online), but I am assuming that the desire will not brook cost or delivery delays.
If your local library is lacking charts, a local college library should have them. Bring a ruler and measure it.
It can be done very easily using a barometer. Ok, get yourself a barometer and some string…
Unfortunately I’m at a branch library, not the main one, where, I am told, such things are to be found. I’ll check that out Saturday.
You can go to TopoZone and try to estimate it. Or, ya know, tell one of us who has GE where the point is.