The Coastline Paradox!

Hi everyone! I´m posting one week more for bring to you freaky math facts and paradoxes. This time I bring a curious paradox that has something related with physics also, it is commonly called The Coastline Paradox.

Lewis Fry Richardson was trying to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border, and then, he realized that there were big differences between the published lengths of international borders, so he started to think about what could be the problem. He concluded that, there were those differences due to The Coastline Paradox, also known as the Richardson effect. It postulates that the length of a landmass, mathematically speaking, it´s never well defined, because it depends on the length of the instrument that you are using to measure.

To explain the phenomena suppose a printed map of Spain, and then try to measure it with a 30 cm rule, it will result easy to measure, but it will give you a number that is far from the actual one. Now, try to measure it with the first centimetre of the rule, it´s a hard task, but the resulting number would be much more accurate than the other. The fact is that, the smaller the “rule” the more accurate the result, so with an infinite small number, the length would be infinite also!
This gif may help!

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/41259.gif

INTERVIEW!

Hi it´s Gonzalo, and I am here with José María Martínez, a graduate in physics and mathematics, and I´m going to ask him several questions about the subject.

-Q: First of all, thanks for your time, I know that you don´t have much time so I appreciate this a lot. And I would like to start asking you if the education has change over the years since you teach.

A: Yes, of course, now the students are more prepared to possible situations at their professional lives, since the teaching is much more practical and less theoretical. There are many who disappoint in this, but I´m sure that this will be the best for your careers.

-Q: Do you agree with those people who are now manifesting for a greater public education?

A: In part yes, because we all need to make much more accessible education, in order to have an advanced population, the bad point is that with all the strikes, the losers are the students, because they lose many days of learning. What is certain is that without the strikes, the government would not respond.

-Q: What do you think about the exams in order to pass to university?

A: Well, I don’t think that´s the best way to test a student´s knowledge, because often is unfair for those examined, but they have the chance to get a good grade in bachillerato, so I do not consider too bad way at all.

-Q: What do you think of the recent government proposal to reduce the Erasmus scholarships?

A: I think that is the worst error they can make. The Erasmus Scholarships are extremely helpful for our students, who get the first international contact there and this will be very important in their futures, as it opens new workplaces. But, fortunately, mister Wert didn´t bring it forward.

And this is all, hope you liked it!