Interesting perspective on the length of a coastline from a boundary
surveyors perspective:

- The physical coastline is always changing. That's the difficult
thing about water boundaries: They are in a constant state of flux.
- In most jurisdictions the "coastline", whether it be low or high
water mark, is often defined by the tidal cycle. One must mean the
complete tidal cycle of 18.6 years to determine accurately these water
marks.

:]

The Sunburned Surveyor

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Paul Uszak <[email protected]> wrote:
> Err, this sounds like an interesting but somewhat frivolous debate.  Whilst it
> may be mathematically correct to look towards fractal theory in discussing the
> length of a coastline, I'm fairly certain they have an accepted length.
>
> I have a picture of one on my wall.  The paper it's on isn't of infinite size
> though.  I also walked along one once.  The fact that I'm now back writing 
> this
> suggests that the walk didn't take an infinite length of time.
>
> It doesn't always advance the position of science in our world to rigorously
> adhere to the theoretical, whilst ignoring the perceptual.  After all, quantum
> theory states also states that I simultaneously both did and didn't write this
> post...
>
>
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