Moving Sale wrote:I still find it strange that I know I can look across 20 some miles of Lake Tahoe and see the casinos on the other side when the math says I shouldn't.
I'd be interested in pursuing that further to see what may be causing it. Without knowing where you were and where you were looking, how high your vantage point was, how tall the buildings are that you were viewing, where their heights are measured from, the elevation of their bases, etc, it's hard to determine much. But given a few pieces of information and making a few assumptions, we can maybe make a few guesses.
The maximum north-south diameter of Lake Tahoe is 22 miles, and east-west is 12 miles, so I assume you were looking from south to north since the southernmost part of the lake is in California and the northernmost part is in Nevada, where it'd be more likely to see casinos. There's an area near the southernmost side of the lake called Pope Beach, and its elevation is listed at 6,229'. Crystal Bay is near the northernmost side, and its elevation is 6,400'. Not sure if a predominant feature of the lake's surrounding area is that its elevation is higher on the north end than on the south, but this is one example of where that seems to hold true. If the horizon is to the north, and the landmarks you're seeing to the north start at a higher elevation than where you're standing, that has to be taken into account when doing the math.
Using the
Earth Curve Calculator that pops linked to earlier, and using 20 miles as the distance and 5.5' for eye height, about 195' of what's being viewed should be below the horizon, assuming your feet and the base of what you're viewing are at sea level. But you're not at sea level, and what you're viewing
may be at a higher elevation than where you're standing, meaning less of what you're viewing would be obscured by the horizon. Just using the elevations I cited of the two locations at the north and south ends of the lake, the difference is 171', which would significantly reduce how much is below the horizon. And if you're standing somewhere that's elevated from the ground, that would reduce it further, almost to the point where virtually nothing would be below the horizon.
Like I said, I don't know all the details, but these are some possibilities that could lead one to believe that what they're seeing contradicts the math.
I also find it strange that pilots fly thousands of miles to places that are on clearly on an arc and yet they don't take that arc into account when flying.
How would taking "that arc into account" be manifested? What would you expect the pilots to do to take it into account that they don't already do or that gravity/centripetal force do for them? Should they be doing something differently in flight? If so, what?