Electronic Proceedings of the Twenty-second Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics

Chicago, Illinois, March 11-14, 2010

Paper C029

This is an electronic reprint, reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Inc. Originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-second Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, ISBN 978-0-321-74614-6, Copyright (C) 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Direct Estimation of the Area of a Lake and 'Ground Truth' by GPS

Jay Villanueva

Florida Memorial University

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ABSTRACT

We present an exercise in geometry that we propose to do in a general education course where we estimate directly the area of an amorphous lake by a series of circumscribed trapezoids. 'Ground truth' on the estimates of lake dimensions and its entire surface area is available by GPS from Google Earth satellites. The values obtained are further confirmed by density measures of cutouts of the lake surface area.

Keyword(s): geometry, applications