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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Dale Lichtblau
Date: 2023 Oct 16, 15:51 -0700
An amazing thread!! Thank you everyone!
But a much simpler problem for you guys:
Wittgenstein used to pose a "simple" problem (according to Norman Malcolm in his Memoir of Wittgenstein:
Suppose you added one yard 3 feet) to a cord stretched evenly and "tightly" around the Earth at the Equator. How far above the Earth, keeping it evenly distributed above the Earth, would it then be? (Most people would say an infinitesimal small amount...and would be surprised by the actual amount. Confusing mental pictures with mathematical reality, said Wittgenstein.)
But instead of keeping the cord spaced evenly above the (assumed perfectly spherical) Earth, you instead grasped the cord and pulled it straight up!
How high, how far above the surface of the Earth would the cord then be at it's apex?
A simple problem for you geometers, I'm sure...but I've been looking for a clear demonstrative solution.
Best regards,
Dale
