wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Re: OT: The center of a landmass
Erik Krause 2009-Jul-06 19:08:00
Am Friday, July 03, 2009 um 19:37 schrieb Jakob Norstedt-Moberg:
> Does anybody know a modern (e.g. google maps based) tool to compute the center
> of a landmass like a country. The center could be defined in many ways (e.g.
> depending on how to treat the lakes and also depending on the selected map
> projection) but I would like to find at least one legitime way to calculate
> it.
There are a lot of different ways to determine a center, even for
very easy geometric figures. A triangle f.e. has a couple of them not
being identical:
* the center of gravity.
* the point which is furthest away from all sides (which is the
center of the inner circle).
* the point which is furthest away from the corners (which is the
center of the surrounding circle).
* the point where all three altitudes intersect (the othocenter).
On german wikipedia there is a list of geografical centers:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_geografischen_Mittelpunkte
Some information in english:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_centre_of_Europe
best regards
--
Erik Krause
Offenburger Str. 33
79108 Freiburg