Today, I'm in Berlin!
-- which you can tell because --
Okay, well, I don't speak German so I have no idea ...
... what on Earth ... that could possibly mean, ...
... but a better indication, when you're in Berlin, ...
... is the TV Tower.
You can see it there, behind me.
And that was built in East Berlin, in ...
... the 1960's, completed in 1969,
and I think it is ...
... absolutely fantastic!
I mean, what a structure!
And I always wondered, ... how tall ... IS the TV Tower?!
I mean I looks PRETTY tall, but could I work it out?
Thankfully, of course there is a way of calculating the height of any monument using mathematics;
All you have to do is, ...
go and buy ... a MAP of whatever city your in,
then go and buy a RULER, TAKE that ruler ...
... and cut off all that excess ruler below 0 ...
You now have a ruler starting PERFECTLY at zero.
Your ^FINAL^ step is to find ...
... just how far the shadow ...
... of your monument reaches.
-- which is EXACTLY what I off to do now.
So I now in Alexanderplatz,
this is my first guess ...
[chuckling] ... to where the shadow could be,
and you could see the TV Tower is behind me,
up over there.
However, the sun is still a fair way, uh, on the side.
So the shadow must be, ...
... well, that way(!)
Off we go(!)
... ##
I've overshot slightly.
The sun is now on the right of the TV Tower from ...
... your point of view,
but if I keep going this way, you can see it goes ...
... behind ... it ...
... *THERE*!
Okay. So,
we are now in the shadow of ...
... the TV Tower.
You could actually see it goes ...
... right, uh, up this building --
Don't know if you could see it on the footage,
but you can see from the tip of the tower ...
... there's like a beam of the shadow going that way.
It's very cool.
... ##
This feels like it's taking forever!
But, I can see behind me, ...
... the TV Tower's FINALY looking like it's getting a little bit shorter ...
... relative to the sun.
So, if I keep going this way, any moment now, ...
... from my point of view, ...
... the tip of the Tower'll line up with the sun,
and I've found THE END ... of the shadow.
... ##
**footsteps**
It's just in there!
It's just over that ... barbed wire,
behind the ... gate blocking off a construction site next to a derelict building.
I came up these ...
... somewhat dangerous looking stairs, and, uh, (now) *I CAN'T GET TO IT*!
So, I've-- I've lapped the block and I *KNOW* ...
... the tip of the shadow is in there, and, ...
... I don't speak German, but I very much assume ...
... that this, uh, DOESN'T say,
uh, "Come on in!
"-- and do some maths, kid"(!)
So, what I am gonna do instead is,
I'm gonna make my way ...
... around to one of the side streets, I walk UP until the point ...
... where the sun lines up with the same level as the Tower, so I know I am in line ...
... WITH the shadow, and we'll do it that way.
**lips smack** Oh, I --
-- g-- It's hard to see that the sun --
But I think I'm ALMOST ... in-line.
Okay, It's R-REALLY hard to see,
but, the sun -
I mean that's easy to see - That's, like, there,
top of the TV Tower is there,
And so, anywhere, kind of along here, I'm prepared to call, lining up with the shadow.
Let's do some measurements.
Okay, so,
here's Ber-r-lin,
the TV Tower is (all the way) over here,
I walked --
-- I've come up ... around ... over here, --
I think the tip of the shadow is, uh yeah, here-ish at the moment.
So ACTUALLY, you know what? Let's call it, there.
That's gonna be ... my line --
This is where the ruler comes into play -
You put 0 *ON* THE *BASE* of the monument you wanna measure.
You then line it up with where YOU are,
and then just read off on the SCALE,
so I ...(am gonna) use the shadow to help,--
I mean that's -- that's what?
I'm getting,--
I'm gonna call that 2.8(!)
2.8 centermetres.
Okay! So we just find the scale on the map - there it is,
and you can see that, for this map, every 1 cm is 160 m.
Okay, measurement done, the-e-e SLIGHTLY COMPLICATED way of looking at the situation now...
... is, I got two similar triangles,
they have the same angle because they both are being cast by the Sun at the same time ...
... and the scale factor between them is the scale factor of the map.
And you could use it to work out the height of the Tower.
But the easier way to look at it is by using the ruler in place of the monument on the map -
I know that IN 'MAP WORLD', the TV Tower would be 2.8 centimetres tall,
and I just use the scale of the map to work out how big that is in-n-n real life.
Either way, if you multiply 2.8 by the 1:160 scale of the map,
the TV Tower comes out to be,
448 metres tall.
Which ... is ... ab-b-bout right(?) When I told someone I was doing this,
they were like, "Well you can--
"You can just look it up, you know?"
and I'm like, "Well, of course I can look it up, but I'll do it afterwards to double check,
"but the fun is, I can try and work it out myself."
And,
I'm close-ish(?)
It's actually 368 metres.
I'm g--I'm close(?)
I mean, how far--?
S'THAT'S AB-- 80 meters is ......
It's alright(!) It's alright. It's not -- (**gulp**)
It's not great, but there are-- ... there are a lot of errors.
So, obviously when I am measuring it on the ground, I'm only going to the nearest *millimetre*.
And, you know, every millimetre is *16 metres*(!)
So,
the--the decent rounding there.
And also, when I picked the spot ...
... to where I think the shadow lines up,
that was ± ... a centimetre, if I'm being honest.
And I think the BIGGEST problem I've got is,
as I've been walking ALL the WAY from the TV Tower ... to here,
I've been going up a hill(!)
So, as you can see behind me, the street--
The street really tapers off and down so --
So the moral of the story is,
this is a *TERRIBLE*, *TERR-RRIBLE* way to calcuate the height of something --
So, if you want to have a go, try this yourself - find a monument, see if you can work out how tall it is ...
... using its shadow;
I'm gonna consider what I've done, *A semi-success*.
So, uh, it's been great being here in Berlin.
I know a lot of my videos ...
... are from London,... New York,
But, Berlin is one of my top favourite cities in the world as well;
If you wan't to see more ridiculous maths videos from me all around the world ...
... and, more often than not, in my studio at home,
then do please subscribe to my channel(!) And, YEAH, go out, measure a shadow.
... #(theme)(.)#