With a pedometer I have determined that five times around my house on the gravel circular driveway is a quarter mile in distance. Ten times around is a half. Twenty trips around the perimeter of the house is one mile.
Today I have walked four miles. I would like to do this every day.
I also put on my engineer hat this morning as I set out to determine the elevation of the levee road above ground level. First I measured the length of the inclined driveway: 150 feet. Then I went off to the side of the driveway about 25 feet and set up a four foot ladder. On top of the ladder I placed my four foot level, parallel to the driveway. I leveled the level. Then I clamped a 90 degree vertical stick at the right end of the level. Then I clamped the end of a four foot stick on the left end of the level and moved the right end of the stick up and down until, when sighted, it was parallel with the slope of the driveway and then clamped it to the vertical stick. Using my angle square I was then able to determine that the degree of slope was six degrees.
Using a scale of 1/16"=1 foot I then drew the right triangle on a piece of paper and scaled the vertical portion of the triangle, which represented the vertical height from the ground to the roadbed. In my mind all these years I had always guessed the height to be 15 or 16 feet...it scaled out to be 16 feet!
I feel very Copernicus-like.
Or at least Pythagoras.
5 comments:
Now you need to know how long in minutes from Greenwich it would take a salamander to climb the incline.
I coulda done that on my compass app on my I phone by standing by the shack, then the levy, and just the walk in between.
But I commend you sir for your skills and the fact you are moving can only mean the Phfrankie we all love will be around longer to blog.
but
♫ do you know the way to San Jose? ♫
Hopefully you are walking at brisk pace... say in excess of 8070 furlongs per fortnight.
Good blog post are! Twenty times around...how long does it take you?
Post a Comment