What is the circumference of mainland Great Britain?

Question

NOT including any islands, provinces etc.

Answer 1

Well, as abc said, only circles have a circumference. However, the question of the length of the coastline of Great Britain is a fascinating one.

A very famous mathematical research paper was published in 1967, by the Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal mathematics and a key player in the development of chaos theory.

The paper was entitled "How long is the coastline of Great Britain"? His main point was that the length can vary greatly depending on the scale at which you want to measure it - just because the British coastline is a highly irregular fractal object with many tiny bays and depending on the scale you choose to measure it at can vary by up to 20%! The answer above that it is infinite is wrong and arises from a misunderstanding of fractal geometry.

That's the long answer. The short answer is approximately 8,000 km (about 5,000 mi) long for the Island of Great Britain (as opposed to over 12,500 km for the whole UK). For the reasons given above no exact number can validly be given.

Answer 2

What do you mean? Mainland great britain is not a circle so it cannot have a circumference. Do you mean how long is its coastline?

I can't find anything on the island of Great Britain, but google says that the coastline of the entire United Kingdom is 12429km if that helps.

Answer 3

I posted this answer to a similar question before.
Have a look at what the wikipedia says.

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Infinite !

It all depends on the level of detail you want (think about it)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uk_coastlin...
for more.