Greenwood press

70
PLANE
A radio antenna uses metal beams
of equal length to support the
receiver at its focal point.

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tive to stairs. They are used to exit highways so that cars can gradually change
elevation. They are also used in a variety of tools. Screws have an inclined plane
that bends around its center so that they can create an angled entry when break-
ing a wall’s surface. Screwdrivers have an inclined plane at their tip so that they
can firmly fit into the top of a screw.
A Mercator projection is a method used to transform spherical coordinates
into a plane. This transformation gives cartographers the opportunity to produce
maps on flat surfaces, even though the earth is spherical. An advantage to this
technique is that images of maps can be placed into books and read more easily.
However, a disadvantage is that the regions near the poles illustrate inaccurate
areas of the landmasses. For example, on a Mercator projection map, a country
near the North Pole such as Greenland appears almost fifteen times its actual
size. Another way to make a plane representation of the earth is to cut along the
longitudinal lines and create gores. However, when the gores unfold, the map
will have empty spaces, leaving a distortion between distances near the pole.
online sources for further exploration
Mercator projection



The three-point problem from geology

The wedge

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