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10 |
Geodesic Calculations: The Geometry Library |
The shapes you explored in Chapter 8 are made up of line segments that appear straight on the map. On the sphere, however, there are no straight lines; even if you could hold your hand steady and draw a “straight” line on a sphere, it would be an arc. Conversely, if you draw a straight line on a map and then wrap the paper around a sphere, the straight line will no longer be straight; it will end up as a curve on the sphere. The curved lines on the sphere are called geodesic. To make a long story very short, the shortest distance between any two points on the surface of a sphere lies on a geodesic circle. Google Maps treats the earth as a perfect sphere, and you need to understand ...
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