| How long is England's coastline? The answer is: It depends on the size of your ruler. Mandelbrot described this in an aricle written for Science (the magazine)in 1967. Like the Koch Snowflake, measuring a perimeter can be tricky. A gross estimation of a coastline obtained by flying up and down the coast will give one figure while a surveyer using a 30 meter line will get another. Imagine someone using a magnifying glass and tweezers to make the measurment and you get the point. |