NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: That magic number: 3438
From: David Pike
Date: 2016 Nov 4, 12:57 -0700
From: David Pike
Date: 2016 Nov 4, 12:57 -0700
Robin you wrote:
And of course
angular size(minutes of arc) = radius of Earth(nautical miles)·length of ship(metres)/distance to ship(metres)
works just as well
Which I suppose is because in this case 3438 is being used as a constant and is effectively dimensionless. I’m glad I read your post before sending my original question which was “What do you use if you’re teaching a class brought up to use metric?” DaveP
