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Crossing an entire country in a straight line

magamig.github.io

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Re: Crossing an entire country in a straight line

#41

If one really wants to stick to a strait line, Monaco is probably not the best. It is certainly small, but it is full of obstacles. For pure straightness, somewhere like Canada, Greenland or the UAE would probably allow you to walk a more-perfect strait line from one coast to another through open territory. Such a trek would be far more difficult but much more strait.

Canada has the Rockies. Impossible to cross in a straight line.

If you are going east-west. The straightest/flattest line is probably north-south, from the USA to hudson bay. Manitoba is pretty flat. Or across the bit between the great lakes.

Re: Crossing an entire country in a straight line

#42
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GeoWizard (the "inventor" of this sport) goes waterline-to-waterline or border-to-waterline. Of course, it's an entirely arbitrary rule, but so is every other rule in sports.

I feel strongly about this subject as I actually travelled to liechtenstein to do the same , I failed, which I am at peace with. My problem with is, a margin of error of 25 meters for a run of less than a km isnt what I would call platinum, my gripe here is with geowizard. I feel the error margin should increase for each km, for example by one meter. So a straight line across a continent allows for a larger margin of…

As someone else posted, https://www.scoremyline.com/ is another metric that is available. GeoWizard collaborated with its creator, and has said that some of his own lines are better with this metric while also stating that the whole thing is of course arbitrary anyway.

This seems like a good match for what you seek.

Re: Crossing an entire country in a straight line

#43
post #11
post #4

Nice :) Is it valid though? I thought you might have had to swim across the harbour because there's more of the country on the other side of it

In Tom’s videos (which this post is based off) he says that you just have to reach sea water

Which doesn't work well for land-locked countries.

I'm sure that some sensible (albeit still arbitrary) geometric rule could be invented, such as requiring that the line bisects the country into two regions which have areas that differ by at most 50%, for example.

Alternatively, or additionally, the length of the line could be required to be greater than some specific fraction of the country's total border/coastline (assuming that has a rigorous definition).

For countries composed of multiple islands (or a mainland with some islands), the rules should probably require that the line pass through the biggest island / mainland, but perhaps multiple islands would need to be crossed (on the same straight line?) in order to meet the "bisecting area" rule above.

Re: Crossing an entire country in a straight line

#44
post #30

Should be ‘Crossing an entire country on a geodesic’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic

I had a similar thought that this would require quite a lot of complicated drilling equipment.

In the light of recent physics results, it might be enough to have a few electromagnets bending space-time along the way.

Re: Crossing an entire country in a straight line

#45
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel strongly about this subject as I actually travelled to liechtenstein to do the same , I failed, which I am at peace with. My problem with is, a margin of error of 25 meters for a run of less than a km isnt what I would call platinum, my gripe here is with geowizard. I feel the error margin should increase for each km, for example by one meter. So a straight line across a continent allows for a larger margin of…

As someone else posted, https://www.scoremyline.com/ is another metric that is available. GeoWizard collaborated with its creator, and has said that some of his own lines are better with this metric while also stating that the whole thing is of course arbitrary anyway. This seems like a good match for what you seek.

This is exactly what I needed - thank you!

Re: Crossing an entire country in a straight line

#46
post #17
post #6

Straight line in 3D or on a specific 2D projection ?

Straight line in 3D would usually require digging underground. Maybe you could do it in an airplane. Compensate for the curvature of the Earth by varying your altitude. This will probably work up to a distance of a few hundred miles.

Monaco is up and down, right ?
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