From Seattle move in a straight line due East. What country will you hit? | Hacker News Reader

From Seattle move in a straight line due East. What country will you hit?

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11 pointsJun812 comments

Title here, "From Seattle move in a straight line due East. What country will you hit?" is subtly different from what the article is describing: "From Seattle, face due East. Now, continue forward in a straight line..."

How does this change the meaning and answer?

In my mind, "move in a straight line due east" can be interpreted as "for as long as you are moving, your movement should be due east". In that case, your latitude will never change. In the northern hemisphere, you will constantly be making a leftward adjustment to maintain a due east heading.

+1 That was my understanding reading the title.

Canada, then France.

The supposed answer, Australia, is entirely divorced from reality.

A strangely curt denial. Obviously the salient idea is that the intersection between spherical coordinates and two-dimensional coordinates creates two human interpretations for the phrase "head East in a straight line from point X". A line can start East and be straight both locally and globally, or it can maintain East and be straight only locally and not globally. In the first, you hit Australia, and in the second, France. Neither are in the slightest "divorced from reality".

You would hit Canada no? Windsor and Toronto are both far south of Seattle. I don’t understand the trick here.

I was going to guess Spain but the correct answer is France.

Shouldn’t the answer be Canada?

If we're going by a "simple interpretation" of the submitted title I'm pretty sure it's Canada. But the article actually says you'll hit "another country" after you leave North America. Which is more or less true but the use of "another" seems to be confusing a continent for a country.

I guess due South would be Canada and due North would be USA by that measure.

That's correct you will hit Canada long before France!

I guess it is because I think of Canada as a freak American state. Upper America, not an independent country.

Going to make this my next interview question

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