What is the length of the Claifornia coast?

Question

How long is the coast of Claifornia? Keep in mind that scale and measuring interval have an impact on the answer!

Answer 1

Damn fractals. It can be as long as you want it to be - it just depends on how many indentations you choose to measure, and at what scale (as the question hints at) You can draw a line across the Golden Gate, or measure the coastline of San Francisco Bay, for example.

Answer 2

The coastline length can be measured in different ways. One site I found gives these two measurements for the Ca. coast:
840miles and 3427 miles

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/maps/bodies-of-water/725.html

Go to the bottom of the page for the info on how they got the 2 measurements.
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Then there's driving distance, or biking distance, where you'd take the highway distances and add those together.

Then there's walking distance, where you climb out on every rock, and wander thru every tide pool.

Then there's measuring at the mean tide line, the low tide line, or the high tide line.

You could measure at the bedrock line too. Or go in and out of every cliff that is touched by sea water (spray or waves?)

Since I tend to drive a lot, I'd measure by road distance, along hwy 1.

The answers, really, are infinite.

Answer 3

Lengths, statute miles
State General coastline1 Tidal shoreline2
California 840 3,427

Answer 4

California coast : 1,100 miles

Answer 5

California coast is most probably 2100km in length.Though I am not sure.

Answer 6

Uh...that state doesn't exsist.....The California coastline, on the other hand.......