a ship is 2.8deg off course, traveling at 14.0mi/hr. how far off course will it be after 2 hrs?

by Emily Corkery 9 min read

How far will you miss your target if you miss one foot?

Consider this. If you're going somewhere and you're off course by just one degree, after one foot, you'll miss your target by 0.2 inches. Trivial, right? But what about as you get farther out?

How far would you miss if you went to the Sun?

Going to the sun, you'd miss by over 1.6 million miles (nearly twice the diameter of the sun). Traveling to the nearest star, you'd be off course by over 441 billion miles (120 times the distance from the earth to Pluto, or 4,745 times the distance from Earth to the sun). Over time, a mere one-degree error in course makes a huge difference!

How far off is San Francisco after a mile?

After a mile, you'll be off by 92.2 feet. One degree is starting to make a difference. After traveling from San Francisco to L.A., you'll be off by 6 miles. If you were trying to get from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., you'd end up on the other side of Baltimore, 42.6 miles away.

How many feet up is the pot of gold?

Two people come to a mountain with a pot of gold on top, 5,000 feet up. The first is so lazy that, although he wants to get to the gold, he refuses to take an upward step. He walks around the base of the mountain, always staying at exactly the same elevation.