Angling Mathematics: Fishing For Complementary Angles

      Our late-spring trip along the North Platte River from Waterton Canyon to Deckers, Colorado, and on to Wellington Lake, was filled with angles and anglers. According to the link cited above, 

  "There are physical properties associated with the bending (refraction of light) which have significant effects on what a trout could possibly see.  The trout’s world consists of a window, the diameter of which is determined by a thing called the Snell’s equation."

    "In simple terms the window is 2.26 times as wide as the trout is deep. So it can clearly see things on the surface over a wider area the deeper the fish is. At one meter the fish can clearly see things on the film in a 2.26 meter wide circle above its head."

      "Many angling writers have made much of this, because a relatively small increase in depth radically changes the size of the window. At 0.5 meters the window has a diameter of 1.13 meters, but at a depth of a meter that window grows enormously to 2.26 meters across. If you take the area of the window the results are all the more dramatic. At 0.5 meters depth the area of the window is 1 square meter, at one meter in depth that window jumps to 4 square meters. Double the depth and you effectively quadruple the size of the window."

      Ah, look at this sky window near Wellington Lake.

       The term angler derives from one who uses an "angle, or, originally "angel," i.e., fishhook for fishing with a line.

     
     A bit of both angles and angels might be involved in angling mathematics.

       Much better angling earlier in the week than on May 18 during the intense Colorado snowstorm. . .

      Big flakes abound in Colorado this month ;-).

      Are you an angler?

Fishing for complementary angles,
Steph