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Calculate the distance between two points
Calculate the distance between two points along the surface of a sphere using the cosine rule of spherical trigonometry. Context is two places on the surface of the Earth, using latitude and longitude.
The question is randomised so that the numerical values for Latitude for A and B will be positive and different (10-25 and 40-70 degrees). As will the values for Longitude (5-25 and 50-75). The question statement specifies both points are North in latitude, but one East and one West longitude, This means that students need to deal with angles across the prime meridian, but not the equator.
Students first calculate the side of the spherical triangle in degrees, then in part b they convert the degrees to kilometers. Part a will be marked as correct if in the range true answer +-1degree, as long as the answer is given to 4 decimal places. This allows for students to make the mistake of rounding too much during the calculation steps.
Metadata
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England schools
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England university
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Scotland schools
Taxonomy: mathcentre
Taxonomy: Kind of activity
Taxonomy: Context
Contributors
Feedback
From users who are members of Glasgow Numbas Question Pool :
| Elizabeth Petrie | said | Needs to be tested | 2 years, 10 months ago |
History
Elizabeth Petrie 2 years, 10 months ago
Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested
Elizabeth Petrie 2 years, 10 months ago
Published this.Elizabeth Petrie 5 years, 5 months ago
Gave some feedback: Ready to use
Elizabeth Petrie 5 years, 5 months ago
Created this.There is only one version of this question that you have access to.
There are 2 other versions that do you not have access to.
| Name | Type | Generated Value |
|---|
| LatA | integer |
11
|
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| LongA | integer |
15
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| LatB | integer |
47
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| LongB | integer |
74
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| Ndeg | integer |
89
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| side_a | integer |
43
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| LatPole | integer |
90
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| LongPole | integer |
0
|
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| side_b | integer |
79
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| EarthRadius | integer |
6371
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| side_n_rad | number |
1.4189811345
|
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| side_n_deg | number |
81.3016
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| side_n_km | integer |
9040
|
Generated value: integer
- side_b
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This question is used in the following exams:
- Mini-maths week 4 by Elizabeth Petrie in Elizabeth's workspace.
- Mini-maths week 4 - extratime by Elizabeth Petrie in Elizabeth's workspace.
- FoG1_Wk4 by Elizabeth Petrie in Glasgow Numbas Question Pool.
- FoG2_Wk5_review by Elizabeth Petrie in Geospatial Fundamentals.
- GF_Wk4 by Elizabeth Petrie in Geospatial Fundamentals.
- GF_Wk11_Final_Test by Elizabeth Petrie in Geospatial Fundamentals.
- Joshua's copy of GF_Wk11_Final_Test by Joshua Einsle in Geospatial Fundamentals.
- Joshua's copy of GF_Wk04 by Joshua Einsle in Geospatial Fundamentals.