
Mountains Aren't the Shape You Think - jonbaer
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mountain-shapes
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bayonetz
The visualizations are not showing actual mountain shapes. Instead they are
showing the envelope of surface area as a function of height. For example, for
the Diamond shape mountains, the base of the mountain is very steep and so has
almost no relative surface area. The graphic is correspondingly skinny at the
bottom.

I think communication would be enhanced here if the visualizations were
supplemented with idealized cross-section illustrations of how a typical
mountain of each type would look. That is what the pictures of the actual
mountains are supposed to convey but they don't really. In this case, a "stick
figure" drawing of each mountain type would do a much better job.

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Patient0
I always did think that the Alps looked like mountains were "supposed" to
look, and mountains in, e.g., US, did not. Having skiied in the Alps and the
US West coast, you really notice that in the Alps, the valleys are steeper and
narrower. Standing on a slope in Zermatt or Chamonix you are much closer to
the other side of the valley, even though you are a long way up from the
valley floor. This is something I only experienced in the Alps.

~~~
vacri
At least they're mountains. Here in Australia, we just have self-important
hills. I drove over 12000' mountain pass crossing into Colorado once, and at
my destination, went to compare it to back home - I'd just driven casually
through a pass over twice as tall as our highest mountain, Kosciusko.

Kosciusko is a tame enough 'mountain' that friends of mine walked it in a
four-hour round trip from the car park. In the fog. While having a near-
relationship-ending argument all the way. :)

Mind you, I've also been told that the mountains in central Australia are so
old, that when the Rocky Mountains were forming, they'd already eroded halfway
to their current height... (and no, they don't look much like 'mountains'
either)

~~~
JacobAldridge
The Himalayas are younger than the dinosaurs - they've grown in the 66 million
years since the dino extinction.

Oh, and in Europe the mountains/hills have eroded to be rockier on the slopes,
so vineyards are planted there; in much-younger New Zealand, the rocks are in
the valleys and the slopes have more soil - so vines are planted in the flat
areas.

~~~
a3n
"These mountains today. ... Get off my slope!"

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davidw
Another odd one is a fault block mountain, like Steens Mountain in south east
Oregon:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Steens+Mountain,+Oregon+97...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Steens+Mountain,+Oregon+97721,+USA/@42.7166409,-118.6155126,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x54b6a4a998dbc9eb:0x7516c295c568319!5m1!1e4)

The western slope rises almost imperceptibly (besides of course the gorges)
while the eastern side is a straight drop down.

Beautiful area, by the way, if you're into going off the beaten path.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_block#Fault-
block_mountai...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_block#Fault-
block_mountains)

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moron4hire
I don't think this is very surprising, but I suppose that might be from the
time I've spent drawing landscapes. I think being an artist and a programmer
requires or develops a certain eye for breaking through cultural perception
and really seeing a subject. It's how you tell the difference between
mountains well enough to be able to draw them from memory. It's how you spot
the one missing semicolon in a large file just by scanning it quickly.

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sp332
I thought this was going to be about how mountains looked too short in Google
Earth, so they amplified the height changes by 3x to make them look right. If
you go into the settings and put it back to 1x all the mountains look really
flat.

~~~
sukilot
Is that because GEarth perspective is from above, not from the foot of the
mountain?

~~~
sp332
You can move the camera around and look at mountains side-on, but it still
looks odd. It's probably because the view is so zoomed-out that you can see
how smooth the earth really is - it's smoother than a billiard ball
proportionally.
[http://www.curiouser.co.uk/facts/smooth_earth.htm](http://www.curiouser.co.uk/facts/smooth_earth.htm)

Edit: I just downloaded Earth and it looks like it's set to 1x by default now.
I read about this a long time ago so I don't know if I had it wrong or if they
changed it or what.

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Kiro
How can you tell a pyramid from an inverse pyramid? Isn't it just decided by
the side you start measuring on?

~~~
fit2rule
Gravity. So: yes.

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SixSigma
I wonder if non-European descended cultures think mountains are shaped like
the Alps.

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planteen
Am I the only one bothered that they mislabeled the Cascades and Sierras as
the Rockies?

~~~
bradleyland
I'm assuming you're referring to the map in column "a" of the graphic. They
didn't mislabel them. The Cascades are nearer to the coast. Same with the
Sierras. I think what's got you mixed up is the perspective of the map. It's
slightly oblique, which shortens the apparent distance between the mountains
and the coast. It's not a terribly good graphic. There are no state borders,
yet the map is clipped in a way that gives very little context.

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genmon
Off-topic, but these kind of headlines drive me nuts... the Partial
Clickbaitisation Of Everything. Like, "Mountains Aren't the Shape You Think,"
are they not? How do you know what shape I think mountains are? The headline
is needlessly provocative, the story is interesting enough without dressing it
up like Buzzfeed-authored Facebook fodder.

I understand this is how the web works, it's attention economics and so shared
headlines need to create traffic (which will convert into more shared
headlines and so on). But I guess I'm wistful for the "inverted pyramid" of
newspaper journalism where the headline was the condensed summary of the whole
story, and imparting information took priority over attempting to produce an
infantile grab response. And it's fine for natively clickbait publications to
do this (Buzzfeed is a fine publication!), but sad when the same pattern is
used by media outlets and blogs that shouldn't need to.

You Won't Believe What This Grumpy Old Man Has To Say About Modern Trends In
Headlines On The Web.

~~~
jacquesm
> But I guess I'm wistful for the "inverted pyramid" of newspaper journalism
> where the headline was the condensed summary of the whole story, and
> imparting information took priority over attempting to produce an infantile
> grab response.

I don't think that's been true for a long time, headlines on newspapers
(especially on the front page) are carefully crafted to sell papers.

~~~
Loughla
No, it's still a thing. The headline conveys the general idea/summary of the
article, the first paragraph conveys the most meat, and information gets more
and more 'fluffy' from there.

Headlines are carefully crafted to sell papers, but definitely convey a
message. So, for example you get (from the NYT today) "Banks Admit Scheme to
Rig Currency Price"; "ISIS Seizes a City Pivotal in Syria and in History";
"Rallying Cry in Anti-Test Movement: 'Opt Out'; and "Kentucky G.O.P. Left in
Disarray by a Close Race."

Instead of: "You'll never believe what these bankers were caught doing"; "Four
things ISIS is famous for"; "Teachers want your kids to skip these tests?!?";
"5 reasons the Kentucky G.O.P is in Disarray".

See the difference?

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forgottenpass
In other news, humans are not accurately depicted by stick figures.

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thaumasiotes
No no no no no -- that's "humans aren't the shape you think they are".

~~~
s_kilk
Wrong again:

"12 reasons humans aren't the shape you think they are"

~~~
hexasquid
Is your body a stick figure? Read this before you hit the beach.

~~~
mcv
I used to draw humans as stick figures, but what I then learned will surprise
you!

