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What is the exact length of Australia's coastline?

35976 km \infty 87273.83927364539203 km 66530 km

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2 solutions

Fernando Castro
Mar 24, 2014

A fractal is by definition a curve whose complexity changes with measurement scale. Whereas approximations of a smooth curve get closer and closer to a single value as measurement precision increases, the measured value of fractals may change wildly. The length of a "true fractal" always diverges to infinity. However, this figure relies on the assumption that space can be subdivided indefinitely. The truth value of this assumption—which underlies Euclidean geometry and serves as a useful model in everyday measurement—is a matter of philosophical speculation, and may or may not reflect the changing realities of 'space' and 'distance' on the atomic level.

It doesn't actually matter about space and distance, but you're on the right track. It just matters that there's only a finite number of atoms that make up Australia. Hence the length of the "coastline" may be poorly defined, but it's not infinite.

David Mattingly Staff - 7 years, 2 months ago

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Even a straight line is a fractal. Does it mean its length is infinite?

Pranjal Jain - 6 years, 5 months ago

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A fractal is a curve whose fractal dimensions strictly exceed its topological dimension

Agnishom Chattopadhyay - 5 years, 9 months ago
Thaddeus Abiy
Mar 24, 2014

Koch Koch Like a Koch Snowflake,coastlines have fractal properties. This is a phenomenon called the coastline paradox. Because of this, the perimeter of a coastline depends solely on the method used to measure it and is practically infinite as more accurate methods are used. Derek Muller's cool YouTube show Veritasium gives a better explanation of it. Check out the video here .

poor google..

Krisna Attayendra - 7 years, 2 months ago

It all depends on the measurement. Two countries (I forget which, sorry) say that their border with the other is 3000km different because they used a different scale to measure.

Trevor B. - 7 years, 2 months ago

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I think you are talking about Belgium and France...

Rohan Rao - 7 years, 2 months ago

Solved it same way

Kahsay Merkeb - 7 years, 2 months ago

Nice explanation

U Z - 6 years, 5 months ago

I posted a note on fractals and koch island here

Pranjal Jain - 6 years, 5 months ago

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