Why You Can’t Measure the Coastline of Britain

[@D__Cain]

The paradox is even funnier to think of when you think that every single wave of water changes the coast

[@normanclatcher]

Headache-inducing.

[@envispojke]

Tides even more so! We barely have tides in Scandinavia but that was my first thought when he mentioned the UK

[@Lohanujuan]

@@envispojkeyaaa I’m glad I saw this comment, I was thinking the same thing. If they just took the measurement 100ft from the coastline then I doubt tide would affect it, no?

[@gigivazelina]

Also depends on the tides... same measurement at different times of the day would yield different lengths :)

[@issith7340]

I think that the United Nations, have a law , since decades now, that determines with accuracy how the coastlines, of a country are measured. The majority of countries of the globe has signed that law. Very few have not, eg:usa, turkey and a few more

[@decreasing_entropy3003]

"One of the most difficult parts for me about learning anything new is simply knowing what the right questions are to ask." This is absolutely accurate and very well put!

[@pyropulseIXXI]

Sounds like something a stupid person would consider difficult.

[@rogink]

It's a bit like how a colleague once described his job. He was the safety officer, so he knew all the safety regs, right? No. There were far too many to remember. But what he did know was where to look them up!

[@malteseowl]

Rubbish - this is absolutely FULL of incorrect assumptions and mistakes. Obviously done by someone who is uneducated - i.e. an American.

[@javielinelpillin1598]

Long before time had a name, the First Spinjitzu Master created Ninjago using four elemental weapons. But when he passed, a dark presence sought out to collect them all: Lord Garmadon. So I, Sensei Wu, his brother, sought out to find four ninja to collect them first.

[@rogink]

@@malteseowl Only morons put comments up that claim stuff is wrong, without putting up their arguments. I'm sure you will agree!

[@haleysettembre]

The coastline paradox is one of my favorite paradoxes to wrap my mind around

[@seasonal_clorox_bleach8308]

Hardly a paradox

[@mitchhak2]

It’s a completely pointless measurement.

[@grassdog46]

just measure it, ez

[@olliephelan]

I think the most sensible and only useful reason to measure it is by reckoning it by the closest route which a ship can sail to the land. The only reason to measure coastline is for shipping reasons. Measure the coast which a ship can navigate The maximum length which the ship can travel as close as possible to land. The ship should not be smaller than a large fishing trawler. There is no other reason for measuring it.

[@grassdog46]

@@luckyspock i could not care less about so called land owners

[@ironcito1101]

It's important to know _why_ you need to measure the coastline. For example, if you're doing military planning and you want to defend a coastline against seaborne invasions, you can use a rather long "ruler" because you can place patrol ships offshore, you can have radar coverage, etc, all of which "smooth" the coastline. On the other hand, if there's an oil spill and you want to know how much coastline is affected, you need a much smaller "ruler" because the oil will get into every nook and cranny. I suppose that's why those U.S. sources came up with different lengths: they had different objectives in mind.

[@johnrivers69]

yeah. how granular you make the measurement can make or break the measurement's usefulness for your desired application...

[@mattg8116]

I'm not sure which "ruler size" this should be applied as, but I think coast lines should be measured at a scale consistent with a person walking along the coast. Measure features that you walk along, not step over for example. I also think there should be a secondary measurement ignoring fine detail, more like a shrink wrap method to determine the shortest path, like that a ship might take, which also seems useful.

[@olliephelan]

Half way (average) between a car driving the coast and a boat sailing the coast. Because theyre the only two things that matter. Land that can be navigated and sea that can be navigated. Thats the only reason to measure it.

[@Zappygunshot]

I like this idea a lot, but there's a pretty big issue here with tides. Depending on when you take your measurement, your outcome would look vastly different. To give you an example: if you look at a map of the Netherlands, you'll see that there's 7 islands following a relatively smooth curve. Zooming out a little, that line continues all the way up to Denmark, and cuts off the Waddenzee (or whatever it's called in English) from the North Sea. However, the Waddenzee is so shallow in places, that at low tide, you can actually _walk_ to several of these islands; and _thousands_ of sand banks fall dry during this time, effectively becoming tiny islands. A coastline map of the Netherlands measured at low tide vs. one made at high tide would be almost unrecognisable. When it comes to your second method, there's a few more hurdles to consider. The mouth of the river Thames is historically notoriously dangerous to navigate, because tidal currents are strange and unpredictable. The path any ship could feasibly take to get in and out of London is constantly changing as sand banks form and erode, and the currents change course. Even a channel that's deep enough to fit your boat through could be too dangerous to pass because a powerful current might push you sideways and strand you. So part of what's considered 'navigable' is down to a crew's skill and risk assessments in the moment. And then there's the matter of which boat you use - a gigantic container ship with a keel that goes down several stories, or a kayak with a draft of only a few centimeters? Where does the ocean stop, and a river begin? Again, the mouth of the Thames comes to mind. These are all very subjective things that will greatly influence the outcome, much like the 'ruler' method.

[@olliephelan]

@@Zappygunshot Well, yeah. Thats why the average comes in. I dont think it should be "where sea and land begin" , but where useable land and useable sea begins. No one needs a measurement for kayaks or canoes. It depends what the purpose is. Most people here are just asking "How long" For that purpose an average between usuable land and usable sea is good enough. The only good reason to measure it is Land Registry (sale of land) /surveyors , and then maritime and fishery quota purposes. If a part of coast cant be safely navigated, it should not be on the maps as navigable. Either way, dont include it. Im no sailor but Id imagine you wont get insurance if you get wrecked on a dangerous spot. If your a pleasure boat on the Thames it wont be insured to go anywhere dodgy. I think the only spot that should be measured there is the navigable port. Theres only one reason to have an accepted length of coastline, and thats navigation and fisheries. But for people who just want to know how big a coast is , measure the driving route by lans (coast roads; clearly measurable) and the safely navigable coast by boat (or ship) Theyre two clear measurements, but one is short and the other is long. So split the difference. Thats the easiest and most accurate. But if you want the length for maritime purposes, only shipping routes matter. (but naturally youre not going to measure both sides of the Panama canal, or Venice.....The only people wanting to measure Venice is the Canal taxi cab licence office and tourist board)

[@bababababababa6124]

Fun Fact: Japan and Philippines both have longer coastlines than Russia somehow

[@fritz404]

Islands

[@anderschristensen8584]

Japan because of WW2?

[@tombo416]

The answer is islands

[@bababababababa6124]

@@fritz404 but Russia has loads of islands too right?

[@Geopolitics_Explained]

It will be really nice if you'll vote in my community poll.,.,

[@who_stole_my_username]

I'm surprised there isn't a defined standard for this measurement. Personally I would use a 1 metre rule, as that is close to what you would use if you were to physically measure the coastline by walking along it.

[@zephyrbat]

Meter sounds really small for this type of thing. Kilometer sounds good. But I totally agree there should be a standard.

[@whatrnames]

The more practical one in most cases would be using the radius of an anti-ship weapon system.

[@megarockman]

The problem I think is that one size cannot fit all uses for it. A ten-kilometer standard might be OK for measuring out the EEZ of a country, but will be nigh-useless if you're looking at a local ecosystem to preserve or designing a civil engineering project for land reclamation. Conversely, a one-meter or one-cm standard will be nigh-useless out in open water for determining where an EEZ ends.

[@ruturajyadav5130]

What about effect of tides?

[@sergey1519]

How about measuring at 1km for the "actual" length, then measuring at 1m to get a bigger answer, then dividing one answer by another to get a jagedness coefficient. ~1km sounds good because for most uses like making beaches, ports, and whatnot wouldn't care about much more resolution than that, but you might want the other number if you want to know how smooth it is.

[@christinafidance340]

I live on a boat on the Chesapeake Bay and I still find it absolutely astounding that I once heard if you could stretch out the entire coastline of the bay and it’s tributaries out into a straight line, it would stretch to California and back TWICE! That’s insane!!! It’s just so jagged with countless little points and peninsulas.

[@olliephelan]

If you walk toward a wall and each step you take is half the distance of the previous step - you,ll never get to the wall.

[@barneylaurance1865]

If the coastline is fractal then it wouldn't just stretch to California and back twice - it would be infinite. Of course the trouble is once you look too closely the position of the coastline starts to be undefined - exactly how far up the beach is the coast?

[@hisownfool1]

In his video on the geography of the USA, Joseph pointed out that the Chesapeake’s coastline is longer than all of India’s

[@fiveninenowNOW]

@@olliephelan you will since you are still going forward but it will be a looong looong time

[@WindowsDrawer]

Just look at "Represa de tucurui" in brazil and you will be quiet

[@Numba003]

I've heard of the coastline paradox before! It's kinda like the paradox of stepping half the distance between two points and never arriving. It's funny just how widely different measurements can turn out depending on the measuring method used lol. Thank you for this fun exploration of the conundrum! Merry Christmas out there everybody! ✝️🎄

[@beckytaylor2720]

Happy day!

[@andreadag]

Merry Christmas, but from next year

[@noodengr3three825]

I read the adventure travel book Two Legs, Four Paws. It was about and by a woman and her dog who walked along the coast of the UK. She measured it off in miles , something like 4000 miles. The coastal paradox was driven home to me by comparing it to walking across the USA which is about 3/4 of that distance !

[@ietsbram]

id be very interested in a video about the shortest coastlines, or the biggest countries that aren't landlocked but still have weirdly small coastlines like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Togo, Congo, etc

[@BoomWarzone]

those arent big

[@Risa222]

yeah, like DRC is massive, but strangely it has a short coastline

[@galacticjellyfish9971]

The congo is the biggest country in africa(I think)

[@thrashntrash]

@@galacticjellyfish9971 algeria is

[@Neqtunez]

@@galacticjellyfish9971 second biggest

[@shTree]

NOAAs numbers are due to the substantially higher quality of their data; they have a very complete coastal (topobathy) lidar dataset which they use for making charts.

[@TheJaredtheJaredlong]

Yeah, I trust NOAA's figures more than the others because they have the most vested interested in actually being accurate.

[@PremierCCGuyMMXVI]

NOAA is a scientific agency after all so it would make sense they want more precise numbers

[@pepper3244]

this dude is the best at stretching out simple concepts to 14 mins

[@SparklingWalrus]

it’s really annoying when he emphasizes a word every 4 seconds

[@MayTheSchwartzBeWithYou]

@@SparklingWalrus I don't find it annoying at all. If anything, I think it's contributed to the massive success of his channel.

[@guneytopal1713]

This video was also rushed clearly. Quite a few mistakes in the video where it contradicts the narrator or simple mistakes that could’ve been amended if they quality checked the video properly

[@SparklingWalrus]

@@MayTheSchwartzBeWithYou totally unnecessary and stupid, why on earth would that contribute to the success of the channel? You make no sense.

[@MayTheSchwartzBeWithYou]

@@SparklingWalrus It makes what he's saying sound more interesting and engaging. Frankly, you're in no position to be giving him advice on how to be a successful KZbinr.

[@sonnyhutchins3141]

scotland's coastline is utterly insane the amount of islands are up there is unbelievable

[@malteseowl]

The definition of COASTLINE is that where the MAINLAND MEETS THE OCEAN - in other words, fuck all to do with little islands (otherwise, on your system, you would be measuring the riverbanks as coastline - think about it),

[@Dan-fo9dk]

@@malteseowl ...that is your own fantasy method of measuring the coastline. Coastline of islands are included. With your method wouldn't nations like Japan, Philippines or Indonesia have any coastline. What is the "mainland" in Indonesia for example...???

[@Dan-fo9dk]

Haha...so a small area that makes up the Scottish west coast is "insane"...ok...ok... ...but I must tell you than then you have lost every (or never known about) sense of how much larger other areas around in the world are with such coastlines.

[@donlee.4308]

@John Kekoa South East Asia: hold my beer

[@sybrninja]

@@Dan-fo9dk Great response! He cant say he is right anymore 😂

[@KelvinNishikawa]

Conceptually, there's a simple method to normalize these lengths that we use in computer graphics: The signed distance field. Rather than measure directly on the transition between land and water, divide the map into tiny grids, and assign each grid a distance to the nearest land/water transition. Then you can pick an arbitrary distance threshold and interpolate between the grids using marching squares or subdivision. You'll get a normalized border with much of the smaller details smoothed away. Using this method, coastlines would be much closer to the distance a plane would fly along. We actually use this method to define coastline EEZs, which are significantly smoother and less complicated than actual coastlines.

[@marktwain368]

What a remarkable way to calculate! We have a sensible solution to the problem! Many thanks!

[@snogard106]

This channel is on a roll for making videos about a topic they already made a video for.

[@apache1234657]

its really similar if you watch them at the same time even the facts are the same

[@masac2853]

@@apache1234657 yah they are just re releasing videos

[@StevenRayMorris]

What are you guys even talking about?

[@snogard106]

@@StevenRayMorris it's pretty self explanatory, yeah? This video, along with the video made before this one (about the island near India that you can't travel to) were videos that he made years ago that talk about the exact same thing.

[@geometryemperor]

I think this also applies to river lengths. This is what makes the longest river a hard thing to answer.

[@user-ij4fi6wr9x]

👆>>>

[@barneylaurance1865]

A river has a thickness though, so you could probably measure the length of the centre of the river in some way - that should be a smooth curve with a definable length.

[@samuelthecamel]

@@barneylaurance1865 not exactly, because the edge of the river is infinitely jagged, so this would cause the center of the river to also be infinitely jagged. You could create a smooth curve to go approximately in the middle of the river, but that would be subjective.

[@barneylaurance1865]

@@samuelthecamel Yes you're right. Still I think I'd define the length of a river as something like the length of the shortest curve that can be drawn from the centre of the source to the centre of the mouth, staying between the banks all along the way.

[@nightstorm16]

@@samuelthecamel measure it like a track, apex to apex imo.

[@pawerybacki98]

I think it’s relatively easy to agree that every coastline length should be reported with the measurement unit used (e.g. 1m) and angular precision (e.g. every 45° degrees of rotation). Alternatively, I’d suggest dividing a map into 1-meter pixels and counting a pixel as an extra meter of coastline if it contains both water and land. This kind of pixel map could be additionally standardized if we agreed on the precise coordinates of the center of a given country and centered the pixel map accordingly.

[@Sem2942UwU]

Nahh waves of sea can easily alter 1 meter long coast in less than 3 hours.

[@tdawg281]

@@tien-le They can definitely get that precise. Even publicly available satellite images can see resolution down to less than a meter (Google Maps being the most obvious one).

[@pawerybacki98]

@@Sem2942UwU Oh, I see... But assuming it was technically possible to take satellite images of an entire country within 1 hour on a sunny day, then my solution would work. But we'd have to wait for that technology and that weather for sure.

[@iqweaver]

High tide or low tide? When does the St Lawrence river start being a coast line and stop being a river?

[@pawerybacki98]

@@iqweaver Great points; they add extra parameters to my proposition. Let's say low tide. But with the internal bodies of water... We would have to specify which pixels contain ocean water as opposed to river water, and this is hard.

[@Stop_being_younger_than_me]

Paul McCartney even included this in the album Let it Be. 'The Long and Winding Coast' however was changed to road though to avoid mass panic exposing so many people to the paradox.

[@Llkolii]

Mass panic? What is wrong with people

[@peterboever3724]

@@Llkolii Irony, dude.

[@Llkolii]

lol how? @@peterboever3724

[@donlee.4308]

Real Line Lores… This dude has passion when it comes to lines. Great Video.

[@Admiralgrusbil]

The notion that Norway has a longer coastline than Australia has always been quite funny to me.

[@user-ij4fi6wr9x]

👆>>>

[@shayaanrasooledits9092]

It also makes it very annoying driving across the country

[@stellacollector]

I love how he managed to bring up geopolitical conflict even in a video with mathematical topic.

[@Gargoyle_911nn]

When talking about borders that’s obviously bound to come up

[@Rosterized]

the way these borders get measured needs to be standardized somehow but good luck getting all the countries on board because they will obviously only agree to terms that are beneficial to them. Basically this issue will never cease to exist

[@maxivy]

I agree with the general gist of what you're saying but the video is literally about measurements defined by geopolitics...

[@AzGunseli]

Great video! A minor correction: I believe 04:56 should be 600 kilometers more than the second measurement, not the first one.

[@solh1574]

Or 1000 km more xp

[@Miki_hero]

I'm not the only one who spotted it then

[@simsimme1799]

i was gonna say the same thing

[@deathbagel]

They also said the CIA measured the USA coastline at over 19,924 miles in the beginning, but then later when comparing it to Norway they show a graphic that says 12,380 miles.

[@Khuros]

Imagine measureing a phsyical object by using an out of scale map. This video is worthless.

[@shmoop5221]

For once It's nice to hear the creator behind RLL having a good time with a video and not worrying about existential geopolitical drama. The guy deserves a breather.

[@izogen7838]

Love to see a remake of your old coastline video

[@obamanyan]

It would be interesting to see a video about the oldest borders and their history as you said with Portugal and Spain

[@lost_porkchop]

I've always heard that was the oldest border. Now I'm curious to know who the narrator thinks has the oldest.

[@TheWingedHussar_]

Idk if it was him but there was a video on Scotland and England border.

[@nivolai8837]

The Spain-Andorra-France border is the oldest

[@walsh9080]

@Nivolai That doesn't sound right to me because Spain was was only unified in 1512. The English-Scottish border seems like it would be older than that tbh.

[@zakuradragon]

I also want to see an episode of how this border was established between the two neighboring countries!

[@spartaninvirginia]

Those Norwegian fjords help Slartibartfast win an award. Gotta give him some credit.

[@teemusid]

Marvin saw the plans he drew for Africa. He called it "dreadful."

[@fragglegoth]

Ha! I thought the same thing! As soon as he said the second longest coastline is... Norway, I thought well, that was Slartibartfast's work.

[@m3rrys0ngstr3ss]

I like to imagine some sort of infinitely long and infinitely flexible rope that you could used to loop around Britain and get the exact measurement.

[@MatthewBaka]

Then you get the length to be infinite

[@venomous_zxs5493]

satellite

[@willzhang8782]

@@MatthewBaka no because it will approach the true coastline length and that number is finite. It should be a calculus problem but somehow he didn’t even mention that in the video

[@japanada11]

The whole point of the video is that there's no such thing as the "true" coastline length. This isn't just an issue of being bad at measuring or calculating - there is NO correct value, even theoretically speaking. Calculus doesn't work here because the coastline isn't a differentiable curve.

[@lexaray5]

@@willzhang8782 Somebody made a video about this a few years ago too that makes the same mistake 🙄 I clicked on this one thinking it would make this point.

[@ThatsNotVeryFunnyLol]

Side note, but Norway looks so beautiful. The Lofoten Islands and the Faroe Islands are two of the most beautiful places I've seen. Would love to visit both one day.

[@nyelvbabycakes]

faroe islands is a different country

[@HuTaoIsMyGirl]

It's cool seing you redo some of the older videos going more indepth.

[@Nerd_Detective]

Calls into focus the need to keep in mind the *utility* of any measurement. I imagine you could find dozens of different coastline measurements with different utility for different situations. Are you measuring for ships navigating tight to the coastline? Or to develop land? Or to build roads close to the coastline? Or to see how many beach blankets you can stack side by side along the coast?

[@PhoenixNorthstar]

I've actually experienced this on a smaller scale. I grew up on the small carribean island of Barbados, and throughout my education we were always told both by text books and our teachers that the island was 166 mi² in size and a total coastline of 61 miles. However in recent years I have seen the total size stated as anywhere between 165-170 mi² and the coastline measured between 58-72 miles.

[@columbus8myhw]

Interestingly, though, there isn't really an "area paradox" - in the idealized world of geometry, fractals can have infinite perimeter but (as long as they're bounded) will have finite area. The issue with your island, then, I imagine, will be a matter of deciding about high and low tide, or some such?

[@paulinecabbed1271]

Was the tide in or out at the time?

[@columbus8myhw]

One potential thing that might complicate matters: it's possible for the boundary of a region to be so complicated that it has nonzero area (let alone length)! Look up Osgood curves on Wikipedia. So if the boundary of your island is an Osgood curve you could get different answers for area depending on whether you include the literal (topologically one-dimensional) boundary or not. I suspect that this does not happen in practice, but who knows.

[@adamkey1934]

Another you often find is that whenever two countries share a land border it's usually the smaller of the two in area that gives the longer measurement for the border. Like they have something to prove I guess. Portugal and Spain was the example given here, but it's repeated by many other countries.

[@Zraknul]

When you scale up to big countries, you usually find there's disagreement on where the border is and no one can be bothered to resolve them. Ie: Canada and US have several.

[@bananawitchcraft]

I love the description of coastline length as "an elusive notion that slips between the fingers of those who want to grasp it" since coastlines are usually made out of water and sand

[@TheJLF65]

What makes the most sense is to start with the "ruler" being based on the units you plan to give the length in: if the length is given as kilometers, the ruler should be based on the kilometer. But let's do a little better and apply some signal processing. The limit on your ruler is analogous to the sample rate used to quantize signals. There, we use the Nyquist Sampling Theorem, which says to accurately reproduce the signal we need to use twice the sample rate. So to accurately reproduce the length in km, we should apply a ruler of 500 meters. Using a standardized ruler is the only real way to agree on lengths, and with the metric system, that means kilometers.

[@MasaTheSlayer]

would be interesting if you would also count coastlines by lakes.

[@EnCwoisant]

Minnesota has entered the chat

[@thesherbet]

Finland has unlocked it's hidden superpower...

[@TheKeksadler]

That's considered shoreline, not coastline apparently.

[@soundscape26]

As if measuring the regular coastlines wasn't complex enough... 😄

[@Zraknul]

@@EnCwoisant Nunavut: Oh my sweet summer child.

[@petepizzo9646]

I’m liking this rate of turning out high quality videos. Probably won’t last, but keep it up!

[@user-ij4fi6wr9x]

👆>>>

[@speedyleafdab9375]

Ngl happy to see one of your video's that isn't covering the sadness over in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world just a fun interesting topic to talk about, not calling your other content bad or anything and honestly thank you for it. I just like this change of pace is all

[@goonyougoodthing]

Agreed, I think this is a reupload though

[@negaversa]

@@goonyougoodthing It is. I've been watching RLL since 2016 and I remember him uploading this before

[@soundscape26]

@@goonyougoodthing It's a remake... the old video was much smaller.

[@Cenn_Devel]

1:54: If you're wondering how Sweden has so many islands, it's because Sweden has a lot of rivers, so many that they create islands. Which you can see at 2:17 .

[@arkrowitz]

Absolutely fascinating video. Sam is getting better and better. And he started off great!

[@Moiraski1]

I’m pretty sure real life lore has already made a video on this paradox

[@soundscape26]

He did, but shorter. Was in the mood for a remake I guess.

[@terrorist96]

I thought I was the only one who noticed lol

[@monsieurwesley]

Your content is so interesting and very educational. Thank you for your videos, I am always so excited when you post a new video.❤️❤️

[@BlyatGaming17]

Love ur vids. Keep posting, good job.

[@purpledevilr7463]

Remember those metre-wheel things from school (for all I know it’s not common). Just get a guy to walk around at low tied. If he can hop over a metre mouth of a river, count that as the ‘coast’ line.

[@endearingteacup]

How do you not have a podcast yet?? 😅 I'd binge through all your stuff while doing some chores, good to stay updated on how the world really looks like right now. But seriously: I. Want. That. Podcast! 😊

[@ErelH]

4:55 I love how 3,400km is only 600km longer than 2,400km 😄 Truly, a fascinating paradox

[@Sumi_S]

Wrong

[@TLG777_YT]

@@Sumi_S r/whoosh

[@taotaoliu2229]

Sooo, if I dug a trench on a beach in Britain that connected to the ocean, would I expand the coastline of the country?

[@thatbritishmallard]

I did that once. Did I just...

[@bababababababa6124]

@@thatbritishmallard guys it’s true he actually did, I was the shovel

[@thatbritishmallard]

You were the microshovel on Compton Chine, Isle of Wight, England, in June 2015?

[@carltonleboss]

That's one of my favourite things to do at a beach

[@stevenlubick2689]

Yes😀😀

[@teacupanimates]

the thing is, there is a very easy solution to this, people around the world meetup and make a standardised form of measuring coastlines, like how u can basically put a grid on top of a map of a country, and trace the coastline like pixel art, and measure the perimeter

[@barneylaurance1865]

But it's not really a problem, and why should everyone have to follow one standard?

[@lonemaus562]

@@barneylaurance1865 so we can measure things right ? Why not stop being stubborn and just use 1 measurement for measuring coastlines.. very simple problem to solve its not a paradox

[@barneylaurance1865]

@@lonemaus562 If it was so simple to solve why hasn't anyone solved it yet?

[@skylark1024]

You did Coastline paradox video 5 years ago, and this video is so much detailed, I hope you revisit some old videos like How tall can we build and can you drive from africa to south america one again. Hope Toyota Correlas make a return too xD

[@cykkm]

The Snowflake curve is probably the earliest example of fractal properties noted as such, long before Mandelbrot had coined the word “fractal,” in von Koch's 1904 paper. It has an infinite boundary length, but encloses a finite area, precisely 8/5 the area of the starting equilateral triangle. It's boundary is a jagged line that “doesn't fit” into one dimension (doesn't admit a continuous bijective map-thus not homeomorphic to-the real number line), but clearly “smaller” than the 2D plane: the boundary line itself has a zero area. It has the dimensionality in between, precisely 2log(2)/log(3)≈1.26D. Most fractals are like that. And let's not forget the very important (for calculus) pathological Weierstrass' “monster” function, which is continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere, whose graph could be the first fractal curve ever discovered, back in 1872, hadn't it been impossible to plot it, even very roughly, without a computer-it had to wait nearly a 100 years to be visualized. But the history of mathematics dealing with the fractal strangeness has indeed been quite long and impressive...

[@skarpevindkast]

only the doctor can measure the coastline of Britain

[@cleo6485]

Hehe

[@Pee-Bag]

doctor who?

[@skarpevindkast]

@@Pee-Bag me

[@Geopolitics_Explained]

It will be really nice if you'll vote in my community poll

[@jjjreads9242]

doctor who? oh wait

[@deucemcallister13]

I live in Louisiana and our coastline is in a constant battle with erosion. Over the last 80 years, we've supposedly lost approx. 1,900 sq miles of land and it continues to erode.

[@LuckyAJC]

need to start becoming Dutch, sea and weed

[@torianholt2752]

@@LuckyAJC The Dutch don't have hurricanes to deal with though.

[@LuckyAJC]

@@torianholt2752 do what texas is doing and build a sea wall

[@Dan-fo9dk]

@@torianholt2752 The Netherlands can regularly experience wind up to hurricane force ....which is 32,6 m/s. That happened in 1953 with wind up to 40 m/s that pressed so much water against their coast that the sea walls (dikes) collapsed and huge areas were flooded ...and with loss of well over 2000 lives. The coast of Norway do regularly experience hurricane force wind ...it has been measured double hurricane force wind. ...even if Norway "does not have hurricanes" if I should use your way of saying things.... The two examples above are wind created by large weather systems ....called a low pressure front... While the weather system you probably refer to is a small (relatively) tropical cyclone, called hurricane, which can have very strong wind. It is not the wind itself that destroy the dikes but the amount of water pressed up against it. The very large scale frontal low pressure systems of the North Atlantic can push enormous amounts of water up against the coast...of for example Netherlands. There are three factors that can come on top of each other (coincide). Low air pressure, sustained wind over a large area pressing the surface water up against the coast and high tide ...and that can result in extreme high water levels. The hurricane seen in tropical part of the Atlantic hitting the Caribbean and the east coast of America (south, central and north America) are so small in size that they do not move much water.

[@soundscape26]

You did this same video some years ago IIRC. Maybe a standard measurement could be agreed upon? Also I was left wondering about the Indonesia and Philippines coastlines...

[@HvnHendrx]

jesus i thought i was just tripping, all they do now is rerelease old videos with no alteration and churn out the most bland and over explained new content. do they delete the old videos? this channel is becoming so watered down it’s sad.

[@ramuk1933]

Self similarity can refer to multiple things, what you were referring to was statistical self similarity, as only the statistical properties remain the same, which is the most limited form. An infinite Sierpinski triangle would have scale invariance, the most extreme form of self similarity and what people usually think of when hearing that word.

[@vongchusiri]

Thanks!

[@truesimplicity]

Not only that, but it changes with the tides every six hours every 28 days or so... And seasons with the tilt of the earth.

[@astron1000]

Great video! It explains why the shoreline of Lake of the Woods (which straddles the borders of Minnesota, Manitoba & Ontario) has a mind-boggling length of 25,000 miles. Counting the shoreline of its 14,550 islands, it becomes a whopping 65,000 miles. All for a lake that has a surface area of 1,700 square miles.

[@iriandia]

I love this video so much! We take things as absolutes, when in reality so much is stuff we chose to define.

[@Konstantin_Postizhev]

нужно просто взять общую площадь суши, перевести её в площадь круга, и подученная длина окружности этого круга будет равняться длине береговой линии. не идеально, но лучшее из возможных решений.

[@jamesmcpherson1590]

The difference between coastline measurements is absolutely not "purely subjective" (9:25), it is methodological. They aren't just guessing or saying what they feel, they are stating the results of their OBJECTIVE measurements. The numbers are different because their methods of measurement are different. If either organization had used the other's methodology, they'd have arrived at nearly the same measurement. While jagged coasts are harder to measure, the fractal analogy doesn't apply, because at a fairly broad level they are smoothed out by erosion, and they shift with the tides. In fact, there are no measurements of any kind that are perfectly accurate. Whether measuring length, height, weight, temperature, or any other attribute of anything, the closer you check, the more imprecise the measurement is observed to be. That is why manufacturers use the concept of tolerance. Every part will vary slightly from all others, so instead of striving for perfection, they set a maximum length and a minimum length that the part must adhere to. If it falls within that range it is said to be "within tolerance". There is a sweet spot in measuring coastlines where the precision curve flattens out, and more precise measurement doesn't change the number enough to warrant the effort.

[@demonicure8793]

I was waiting for RealLifeLore for a coastline paradox video It is finally here

[@J4bari]

He made already 4 years ago

[@kancelas]

I think the coastline length resembles a graph with a unknown limit, but the limit is always lower than infinity.

[@asliceofcheese7152]

or an asymptote

[@johnsanko4136]

It's logarythmic. There's a true value that increasingly smaller units will infinitely approach, but it does not approach infinity. If they're approaching astronomical units (like sun to earth distances) while measuring the coastline of Britain, they're clearly doing something wrong.

[@JohnMcMahon.]

This channel is LIT. Subbed 😊

[@Noct31]

Not to mention coastline lengths change with the tides, as well, making it an even more elusive number to pin down.

[@davesprivatelounge]

Fascinating stuff. The size of the ruler comes down to what exactly you want to achieve vis a vis coastline. For example, you might use a larger ruler for air defense and a smaller ruler for land defence.

[@caseygecko]

i reckon the best way to do it is just to set a common ruler length of one metre - roughly equivalent to one human footstep. that way every measurement is standardised and the length denoted for each coastline is roughly how long you'd have to walk if you were to travel all the way around it

[@DehydratedDarkness]

Yeah, science has standardized most things, why not this? A kilogram is a kilogram because we agree it is. Weights would also become "infinite" (pardon me, I hate applying maths to everything, physics is no place for theory maniacs, depsite what they always claim) If we started more and less accurate ways to measure weight

[@lonemaus562]

They are just making a bigger deal then it needs to be.. it’s not a paradox at all, simply haven’t paid someone enough money to walk around the country and measure it it seems lol

[@gunnerbeau1]

Sorry, a bit of a pedantic correction. But you were measuring the coastline of Great Britain rather than the UK as you missed out Northern Island.

[@Emc4421]

I thought if this very same paradox on my own, not with the borders of coastline, but with lines and perspective in general. I called in the SCOPE PARADOX and even started writing about it recently to submit for review. It is comforting to know that someone had already thought of this and I wasn’t the only one.

[@marktwain368]

This presentation is a gem! Great photography, interesting commentary and fascinating topic. You have outdone yourself, my friend!

[@Jacobinks]

Another one of these videos 😮 You’ve done this with rivers before.

[@fallingpotato9221]

What if you were to use calculus and the limit process to shrink the measurement increment size down infinitely small but not zero? Does the length go to infinity or is it approaching a specific number? Edit: you’d probably have to have a function to go off of and coastline doesn’t really have that. Edit 2: I commented before he addressed it in the video.

[@trewajg]

This is calculus. This is the way you calculate for example the length of an arbitrary curve. In this case, the curve is the coastline. Given that the coastline in real life is made of actual particles, the max you do is sum the distances between each sucessive particle in the coastline, there are finitely many particles so it would result in a finite result, although it would be a useless result.

[@EAWanderer]

Ah, another 1 about the UK 🇬🇧 A double whammy! It's our blessing as an island to enjoy such a long coastline! 😃 Although this is actually a good question, im learning myself now 🧐 watching this!

[@EEEEEEEE]

E

[@srensen3081]

@@EEEEEEEE W

[@haroldinho9930]

Uk is mid Ireland clear.

[@swampasszoomonster]

bros obsessed with the uk

[@haroldinho9930]

@@swampasszoomonster lmfao u thought

[@mattuiop]

A fair standard/method would be "accuracy to rolled out segments at 1km long, with nodes within a meter of a location that has year round earth above water."

[@garrettjohnson6738]

Thanks!

[@Meatman2042]

Just run around Brittans coastline with a Apple Watch and track how many miles you walked.

[@Tenzinglion]

You do it :)

[@Cody-Coyote]

You should've linked to your "longest river in the world" video as it has many similarities that would be relevant if people wanted more information on this kind of phenomenon.

[@soundscape26]

Yes, I was reminded of that video as well.

[@Daniele-PierreDuLac]

Haven’t you made this video twice now? Once for the actual coastlines and another where you use the same principle and apply it to river lengths.

[@soundscape26]

Yes, he did a video on the coastal paradox some years ago. This is the remastered and expanded version I guess. 😄

[@barneylaurance1865]

But unlike a coastline a river has a defined thickness. So can't you just draw a smooth curve down the middle a river and measure that?

[@christof2620]

Keep it up, you and your team are my heroes!

[@fullcirclehistory]

1:54 Finland is not part of Scandinavia. It is a Nordic country, but Scandinavia only refers to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

[@ArandomPerson7996]

Fun fact: Britain in land area is much smaller then Sweden but its population is more then 3X Larger

[@Car_toz]

an even bigger comparison is UK vs OZ

[@TheKeksadler]

My favorite example of this paradox being abused is by the tourism board for the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, which famously claims that there is more coastline along the lake than that of California. (I know coastline isn't really applicable to lakes, but The Lake is about as close to an ocean as you're going to get in Missouri 😅)

[@user-zl6qg8nf6d]

👆>>>

[@b3nonee]

You're talking about the coast of the "United Kingdom" but you've not factored in Northern Ireland

[@MrHimalayas_]

The real paradox is the fact that we've all seen this video before and it hasn't been in the last 5 days.

[@krisjonesuk]

Beyond the mathematical paradox there’s also a question of how to define “coastline”. Is it measured at low tide, high tide or at the midpoint? Some definitions also maintain that the coast includes the length of rivers up to the point where they cease to be tidal. By that definition London in the UK is coastal because the River Thames is tidal up until Teddington Lock in the west.

[@deltalord6969]

But like, what if someone measured the coastlines of the oceans? How wide is the Atlantic ocean's coastline?

[@_Woody_]

That would just be the combined coastline length of all the countries the specific ocean borders. Which would be even less accurate.

[@music2872]

Please lord op cant be seriously asking this question 😅

[@bababababababa6124]

1:37 when are people gonna tell Sweden and Norway and Finland that tiny rocks poking out of the water aren’t islands 😂😂

[@tombo416]

Honestly 😂

[@fritz404]

Canada most definitely has the most just by observation

[@bababababababa6124]

@@fritz404 facts, Canada and Indonesia have more actual islands

[@fritz404]

@@bababababababa6124 true true, I don't even think Canada counts islands unless they're a certain size too unlike Sweden Finland and all that

[@jjjreads9242]

fr canada don’t count their islands unless their a certain size im pretty sure

[@cheese7978]

legends say this is a re-upload.

[@cheese7978]

ah yes a scam bot

[@rlbertjhossph3193]

Thank you J. PISENTI The way that u explain it is INSANELY COOL

[@denelson83]

This is essentially a parallel concept to the Mandelbrot set, a set with a finite interior area, but an _infinitely_ long perimeter.

[@ig38428]

One note about the Portuguese and Spanish border. It's been set in stone for a long time and for the most part, but there's a small dispute (Olivença) since the Napoleon age.

[@bluemeannie]

I still don't see why they don't just get a boat or SUV, set the odometer to 0 and drive/sail round all the coasts. Surely it would be accurate enough give or take a few hundred miles depending on the countries size.

[@brentsnocomgaming7813]

8:30 It also doesn't help how quickly large sections of Louisiana's coast are eroding.

[@volts420]

It's pretty cool to watch this vid while high Thanks

[@Searchingtheworld7183]

Truly incredible information about the coastlines.Truly remerkable!

[@sabretooth1997]

A great example of the balance between precision and accuracy.

[@PuckADV]

7:51 personally I’d trust noaa the most with their measurements as they do the most when it comes to the surveying of land-best way I can put it is that nowadays noaa is not using a ruler

[@james2042]

A simple solution would be a standardized unit of measuring coastlines based on approximately 1km, and always rounded up to the nearest whole unit. Then it would need a fixed ratio on screens to make it so it could be compared, say 1km = 10cm on screen, so you can actually put a ruler up to the screen and measure out 10cm to get exactly 1km on a map

[@connorprime]

Finally, something not current World History, and this is so much like the starter video you made. This was interesting too :).

[@user-zl6qg8nf6d]

👆>>>

[@weksauce]

This isn't a paradox. Nobody expects anything else of coastlines. Coastlines don't have length (or you could say all coastlines have infinite length). Coastlines are fractals. Coastlines' jagginess is measured as decimal powers of 1, (like 1.5, 1.6, etc), which can be thought of as the degree to which a coastline is between 1- and 2- dimensional, where ^1.0 is 1-dimensional, and ^2.0 is 2-dimensional. This makes sense, because we measure length in feet (ft^1) and area in square feet (ft^2), for example. A line is 1-dimensional, but the more "jaggedy" a fractal gets, the more it takes up area, and not length. The length/perimeter of coastlines are nonsense, precisely because they're fractals.

[@richeybaumann1755]

*Splits the back half of an old video off as an entirely new video* *Gets double the views and even more channel visibility* Honestly I'm impressed, that's just efficient.