How to find out the length of an object from a distance from it?

  • Dec 11, 2020
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Good afternoon, dear guests and subscribers of my channel!

In the photo there is an island, but instead of it, there can be any object. The fact remains that the length of an object located at a distance from you can be calculated in a few simple steps and this requires only knowledge from the school geometry course and a little ingenuity.

I will explain everything schematically and observing even at an angle, we can find out the real length of an object using the properties of triangles and parallelograms. As an example, I will take a ship and to start searching for its length, a straight line is randomly constructed AB along our object.

After that, we catch a glance at the edge of the object and for each of the two edges we build straight lines perpendicular to the line AB, thereby defining the points FROM and D respectively.

This can be done in a variety of ways, by constructing a template from a sheet of paper in place or driving three nails on a board, or simply along the Pythagoras 3-4-5 triangle. I described these methods earlier and the links will be available at the end of the article :-)
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We designate points C and D any of the materials at hand: stones, sticks, etc. Then, in the center CD dot is marked ABOUT with the help of a tall object that can be viewed from afar.

Further, we retreat back from the object, moving along each of the straight lines perpendicular to the segment CD. We move until our eyes match the center point ABOUT with the opposite edge of our object (this will be the diagonal of the parallelogram).

We do this on both sides and mark the points. X and Y. Thus, by connecting the obtained points, we get a distance that exactly corresponds to the desired length of the object.

Friends, thank you for reading the material to the end. I have many more articles on the topic of applied geometry and its application in life. And in fact, a lot of problems can be solved without special measuring instruments.

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