the.com/coastline
a measurement that gets longer the closer you look — math's favorite practical joke
means The outline where a body of water meets the land, tracing the edge of a coast.
from A straightforward English compound of "coast" plus "line." "Coast" came through Old French "coste" (modern "côte," meaning rib, slope, or shore) from Latin "costa," originally "rib" or "side" — the same root that gives us "costal" and, by way of "side," the idea of skirting along an edge. "Line" descends from Latin "linea," a linen thread or string used to mark a straight measure. So a coastline is literally the thread tracing the land's seaward rib — though, as the essence notes, that thread refuses to hold still under measurement.
- infinite edge
- Smaller rulers yield longer coastlines, approaching infinity
- fractal nature
- Mandelbrot used coastlines to define fractal dimension
- border dispute
- Nations report wildly different lengths for shared coasts
- erosion engine
- Waves redraw the line grain by grain, daily
- longest claim
- Canada's coast stretches over 200,000 kilometers
norway — world's longest coastline at 100,915 km including islands and fjords
finland and sweden border — torneå river coastline dispute resolved 1809, demarcates gulf of bothnia
great barrier reef australia — 2,300 km of coral coastline off queensland, world's largest reef system
dalmatian coast croatia — 1,777 km of adriatic coastline with 1,246 islands, heavily touristed