Math Is Fun Forum

gsandy

Member

Registered: 2006-04-07

Posts: 4

Latitude and Longitude

I am wanting to use latitude and longitude (degrees and decimal degrees) of two positions to work out the distance and angle between the two. I have used Pythagoras theory which gives an approximate answer based on the fact that one minute of angle is one nautical mile. There must be a more accurate way to calculation the distance and angle, do you know?
Thanks Sandy

John E. Franklin

Member

Registered: 2005-08-29

Posts: 3,588

Re: Latitude and Longitude

haversine formula at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haversine_formula

and also there is a nautical book at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in
the Gordon Library with another formula for this, since I remember
looking it up once to try to figure out the tetrahedron one weekend.

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igloo myrtilles fourmis

gsandy

Member

Registered: 2006-04-07

Posts: 4

Re: Latitude and Longitude

Thanks for your help John. I was wanting to use Haversine in Excel and have found enough on the web to get me going. Cheers, Sandy