Asklemmy

44839 readers

1101 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

117

What's something that's taken for granted that occasionally makes you think, wait wtf? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 day ago by manicdave to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For example, Britain's national mapping organisation's brand is associated in our national consciousness with going to a small shop in a quaint village to get a map showing how to walk up a mountain. It's called Ordnance Survey. If that sounds like Artillery Research to you, that's because the project started because the king wanted to know how to accurately bomb Scotland.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Airplanes. Like I get that we can make them stay up, but we can steer them?? Across entire continents and oceans? What the entire fuck

[–] INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone 8 points 23 hours ago

They are made of steel, lmao... how silly do they think we are.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Even weirder is that the most efficient way to steer them is not in straight lines. Because the most efficient way to traverse a sphere is on a slight curve.

Get a string and pick two points along the equator on a globe. Stretch the string tight. It’ll bend into a slight curve above or below the equator (instead of following the equator directly) as you pull it, because the shortest distance between two points on a globe is not a straight line.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago

You're talking about great circle routes, which is why long distance airplane flights look strangely curved on most flat projection maps.

What's even more fun is Coriolis force, which in the Northern hemisphere will deflect your path slightly to the right. Pilots tend not to think about it because the wind is a much greater force for deflection but it's there.

[–] pebbles@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago

Has anyone ever sent you nudes cause of your name?

[–] juliebean@lemm.ee 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

of course the shortest distance is a straight line, that's literally the definition of a straight line.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

The point is that you can’t follow a straight line on a globe, because that’s longer than taking a slight curve. If you take a straight line, you follow the entire circumference of the earth, but following a curved path allows you to avoid some of the width. Basically, the circumference means a straight line is more curved than a curved path.

[–] juliebean@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago

i don't even understand what you think 'straight' and 'curved' even mean at this point.

[–] asret@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 hours ago

Isn't it still a straight line from the perspective of someone travelling it? It just appears curved because you're looking at it from outside the curved surface.