Arcminutes to meters

An unusual sunny morning opened up the possibility of a cross campus measurement.

Thoughts of the northwest corner of the B classroom building and the southeast corner of the allied health building had swirled in my head as I fell asleep the night before. Was that gap threadable on a constant line of latitude? A morning check of Google Earth suggested that the line might not be viable. The southeast corner of the allied health building occludes a line that just clears the northwest corner of the B building. 

At 8:00 no students had yet arrived in the classroom, so I went to map the gap between the northeast corner of the B building and the southwest corner of the allied health building. This gap would constrain solutions on the ground for the other two corner clearances. The gap runs from North 6°54.562' to 6°54.568' 

The northwest corner of the B classroom building is located at North 6°54.566' which means that the view above is essentially due East. This view suggested that the line is viable.

A North 6°54.566' line would cross this corner of the parking lot and the parking lot drainage ditch.

The West end and start of the measurement would be here at East 158°09.500

The starting location for the measurement.

The view East around 08:17.

The line would have to cross two other drainage ditches seen in the midground.

Staying on the North 6°54.566' line would mean heading due East between the two center palms.

The gap can just be seen beyond the grass between the solar panel columns. 

The electrical box on the solar panels provided a good reference over the first hundred meters.

The hood of the black car would just stick out past the North 6°54.566' line. 

Leona recorded data on a print out generated from a spreadsheet.

As anticipated, the route would clip some of the parking spaces and then cross the parking lot ditch. 

At 8:44 the class crossed the entrance driveway. In the deep distance the open gate to the allied health building is open and in line with the gap between the buildings. 

Obigatory selfie. Rainy not. Sunny and hot. 

The class would continue to track East with a final 30 meter mark at 360 meters. An additional fifteen meters took the class to the edge of the round island road for a total measured distance of 375 meters. This would exceed a prior modern distance measurement of 366 meters from the bookstore until the class hit the inside of the fence on the north side of the allied health building summer 2025. 

Prior to walking east and generating a scatter graph, the class used to walk west on a line that covered as much as 644 meters back in 2008. This was not used to generate a graph. The walking east to generate a distance in meters versus distance in arcminutes developed later.

Back in the classroom the data was entered into the single tab spreadsheet for this term to accommodate the Smartboard's memory limitations. The Google Sheets table was copied and pasted into Desmos, analyzed, and the results were reflected onto the board. This term the one milliarcminute distance of 1.864 meters was physically mapped out onto the board. 

The data recording sheet used in the field.

Data graph

Data table

Data analysis

The morning wrapped up with a look at North 6°54.566'  East 000°00.000' and photos from there along with present uses for GPS coordinate data.