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The Eiffel Tower is 324 meters tall (including a 12 meter antenna) and the base is 125 meters on a side. The height is obtained from several sites including: The width is more difficult to determine. It seems the width of the base from
the center of one foundation to the center of an adjacent one is 100 meters. But
we want the overall width of the structure at its base. From:
So the side is (in Fortran): SIDE = SQRT( HEIGHT**2 + (BASE / 2)**2) If we plug in the values for HEIGHT and BASE, we find that: SIDE = 329.973105 So the total lengths of Eiffel Towers (ETs) laid end to end, in meters, are:
(I added columns and calculations for four and five ETs. The need for this will become evident below.) Immediately we can see that Kush's supposition that fewer ETs would fit in the mall if the tips were suspended is wrong. In fact, suspending the tips makes the distance consumed by each ET smaller, not larger, thereby allowing more ETs to fit in the mall. But we need the results in miles. So we examine our handy-dandy conversion tables and find that: 1 KM = 0.62137 miles Applying this factor with the knowledge that 1 KM = 1000 meters, and reducing our number of significant digits to those in the conversion factor (five) we have, in miles:
Kush said "the Mall runs about a mile in length". From the above calculations, it looks like five ETs is the correct answer. And we see that the difference between suspending the tips or letting them sit on the ground is about 1.84%; not significant. |
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