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How Long Is a Coastline?

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A coastline has no single length. Measure Norway's shore with a 50 km ruler and you get 2,500 km; measure it with a 50 m ruler and the number passes 100,000 km. The coast is not getting longer — the ruler is getting honest.
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Lewis Fry Richardson noticed the problem while studying the length of national borders. Every time he shortened his measuring unit, the total grew. Benoit Mandelbrot later named the property fractal self-similarity.
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National agencies pick different measurement scales, so published coastline lengths for the same country can differ by an order of magnitude.
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The United Kingdom's official coastline length has been revised upward four times since 1950, purely because of better surveying.
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