‘Only truly ‘accurate’ measure of the length of the coastline — any coastline — shows that it is almost infinitely long.’[1]
The coastline of Great Britain is difficult to measure because of the methods of measuring them. This report will attempt to find the length of Britain’s coastline using two different methods and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
One method that gives a brief outline of a coastline’s length would be looking at maps of various scales. The result of this would be smaller scale maps resulting in shorter coastline lengths and larger scale maps, longer coastline lengths. This is called the coastline paradox: a term founded by English mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson and means that the larger the scale of map used, the longer the measured coastline length is. This is because the greater a map is enlarged, the finer the details captured of a place’s border. The results would be the same if measuring a coastline physically but also the idea that tides are constantly changing and waves are breaking so the point of where sea meets land is unclear also makes physically measuring a coastline difficult.
Coastlines are considered to be fractals. A fractal is an image that contains self-similarity which is described as something that is exactly or similar to a part of itself [5]. They usually have complex detail at every scale and are difficult to measure when in the shape of a coastline therefore a fractal’s dimension should be found. This would outline whether a fractal’s length is at least finite, infinite or zero. The problem being that a fractal’s dimension is never a whole number however a method known as the box dimension helps solve this. The method consist...
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...e scale at which you measure it [6]. Or in other words the coastline is infinitely long.
Works Cited
[1][6] Darkes, G., 2008. The British Cartographic Society. How long is the UK coastline?.http://www.cartography.org.uk/default.asp?contentID=749. Accessed: 21/04/14.
[2] Fractalfoundation.org, 2014. Fractal Foundation Online Course - Chapter 1 - FRACTALS IN NATURE. http://fractalfoundation.org/OFC/OFC-10-4.html. Accessed 21/04/14.
[3] Lippman, D. and Rasmussen, M., 2014. Active Textbook | Sample Textbook 3. Activetextbook.com. http://www.activetextbook.com/active_textbooks/563#page. Accessed 21/04/14.
[4] Wikipedia, 2014. Minkowski–Bouligand dimension. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski-Bouligand_dimension. Accessed 21/04/14.
[5] Wikipedia. Self-similarity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/self-similarity. Accessed: 21/04/2014.
coast (as shown in pictures 1 & 2). The area of sea is subject to the
of tides. High - water heights vary from 22 to 28 feet and low - water heights
Rhys, Jean, and Judith L. Raiskin. "Wide Sargasso Sea." Wide Saragossa Sea: Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. 3-112. Print.
United States v. Smiley, et al.. (n.d) retrieved February 17 2014, from NOAA Coastal Services Center Web Site: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/data/Documents/OceanLawSearch/U.S.v.Smiley_CaseSummary_PDF.pdf
Gull, John. The Oxford Illustrated History of Brittan. Great Brittan: Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome, Somerset., 1984. Print.
Increased sea levels can give way to a variety of problems: rapid coastal erosion, shoreline change, loss of natural protective barriers, saltwater intrusion into aquifers and surface water, changes in tidal prisms (volume of water in an inlet between high tide and low tide), and rising water tables ("Climate Change and Impacts of Sea Level Rise"). Ventura County is facing many issues with rapid coastal erosion and loss of natural protective barriers. Beach Erosion Authority for Clean Oceans and Nourishment (BEACON) conducted a study to evaluate the conditions of different beaches along the Ventura County coast (Barlow, "Coastal Erosion Problems Highlighted in New Study"). Port Hueneme’s western beaches (picture to the left) are losing three to five inches per month due to sea level rise pushing beaches farther back.
Noggle, C. A., Dean, R. S., & Horton, A. M. (Eds.). (2012) The Encyclopedia of
Semaphore Beach is affected by many factors such as natural processes and human impacts including marine litter and the discharge of stormwater. Therefore, several plans have been employed to ensure that the coast is supported through the method of counteracting erosion. However in the future, many management strategies have been put into consideration as well as the environmental, economic and social impacts as well as the predicted consequences. These impacts include traffic related incidents, noises and air pollution and the disruption of wildlife and the erosion of dunes. A method that should be considered for future management of the beach is the use of a concave sea wall, although efficient, this structure would be quite costly. Without the use of coastal management, Semaphore Beach would be unsupported, therefore negatively being affected by a variety of
While relaxing on the beach with Mrs. Ratignolle, the sight of the endless ocean brings back memories from Edna's childhood. She suddenly recalls a summer day in Kentucky and "a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl...and I felt as if I must walk on forever without coming to th...
In being characterized with fractional dimensions, Fractals are considered to be a new division of math and art, which is perhaps why the common man recognizes them as nice-looking and appealing pictures that are valuable as background on computer screens and art patterns. But they are more meaningfully understood by way of the recognition that many of nature’s physical systems and a lot of human works of art are not standard geometry forms. Fractal geometry enables infinite methods of relating, evaluating and forecasting these kinds of natural phenomena. Simply said it’s a never ending pattern that repeats itself at different scales again and again. Thinking in patterns refers to fractals as “the approach to study roughness in both pure mathematics and in mathematical sciences of the real world (Novak 1).” Roughness is the idea that mathematics can measure obscure geometric patterns. This includes nature (turbulence, clusters of statistical physics, broken solids, art, finance, noises, and many more every day encounters). The issue that arises from the concept is whether it is possible to classify the entire world by making use of mathematical equations.
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Ed. Lee A. Jacobus, Ph.D. 3rd ed. of the year. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996. 672-709. 2.
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