Phileas Fogg III wants to commemorate his grandfather's circumnavigation by going around the world in 80 hours. This will be by airplane, and he wants to start out at 16° South, travel somwhat north of east maintaining a constant direction bearing, and end up at the same longitude at latitude 41° North. This sort of path (constant direction bearing) is called a loxodrome, which maps as a straight line on a Mercator projection.

What should that constant direction bearing be?

(In reply to Possible solution by Jer)

It's a common misconception that the "projection" in a Mercator projection is a literal optical projection, of light beams from a central source intersecting the globe and literally projecting the shadows of the continents on to the Mercator cylinder. It's actually a mathematical projection designed to make the rhumb lines, or loxodromes, come out straight.

Posted by Charlie on 2024-07-30 12:02:27