If you’ve ever done any serious walking — perhaps as part of a Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition — you might have come across an object like the one in the photograph. They are commonly known as trig points, more correctly as trigonometric or triangulation stations, and there were once more than 6000 of them in the UK. Constructed from the mid- 1930s for a task that took until 1962 to complete, they are now all redundant and some have been removed. Of those that remain, many have been adopted by local groups, who keep them painted and tidy. But what were they for?
In this Mathskit I hope to show you how the same mathematics that was used in the ‘Retriangulation of Great Britain’ can be used in everyday physics problems.
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