this is one of those facts that you might not know but totally makes sense 🤓
#tdil that the distance to the horizon changes based on the height of your eyes 👀
now, this only works when you’re looking out into the ocean … i probably should have mentioned that 😅 but yes, the distance changes depending on your eye level! which is pretty mental 😁
why does this happen? well, it’s all to do with the fact that the earth is round 🌎 (sorry flat earthers 😅). you see, whilst we usually think of large bodies of water being flat, they actually curve with the earth 👍🏻
when you actually do the maths (there’s a fancy formula that i’ll mention in a mo) it isn’t usually that far away … like, if your eyes are 5.5 feet above the ground (that makes you about 6ft tall), the horizon is only actually 3 miles away! 😱
wouldn’t you think that it’s so much further away than that?! 🤯
want to figure this out for yourself? well, here’s a fancy formula that lets you do just that 😏:
squareroot (height above water’s surface in feet/0.5736) = distance to horizon in miles 😁
i actually got that formula from howstuffworks (->here<-) … apparently it’s only a rough formula, but it’s still cool!
laters 🙌🏻 #tdil
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this has been the most scientific thing that we’ve had in a while 😎 fancy something a bit simpler? just take a look ->here<-
(picture time! header is ->here<-, picture one ->here<- and picture two ->here<-)
