Tham khảo tài liệu 'reallife math phần 6', ngoại ngữ, anh ngữ phổ thông phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | Measurement Measuring the Height of Everest It was during the 1830s that the Great Trigonometrical Survey of The Indian sub-continent was undertaken by William Lambdon. This expedition was one of remarkable human resilience and mathematical application. The aim was to accurately map the huge area including the Himalayans. Ultimately they wanted not only the exact location of the many features but to also evaluate the height above sea level of some of the world s tallest mountains many of which could not be climbed at that time. How could such a mammoth task be achieved Today it is relatively easy to use trigonometry to estimate how high an object stands. Then if the position above sea level is known it takes simple addition to work out the object s actual height compared to Earth s surface. Yet the main problem for the surveyors in the 1830s was that although they got within close proximity of the mountains and hence estimated the relative heights they did not know how high they were above sea level. Indeed they were many hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. The solution was relatively simple though almost unthinkable. Starting at the coast the surveyors would progressively work their way across the vast continent continually working out heights above sea level of key points on the landscape. This can be referred to in mathematics as an inductive solution. From a simple starting point repetitions are made until the final solution is found. This method is referred to as triangulation because the key points evaluated formed a massive grid of triangles. In this specific case this network is often referred to as the great arc. Eventually the surveyors arrived deep in the Himalayas and readings from known places were taken the heights of the mountains were evaluated without even having to climb them It was during this expedition that a mountain measured by a man named Waugh was recorded as reaching the tremendous height of 29 002 feet recently revised 8 840 m . .
