In the
Access Maths class I was asked about the detailed geometry of an old test question. In the question the students were told the angle above the horizon of a meteor, as viewed from Drumlemble and from Taynuilt, and the distance between the two villages. They had to draw a wee triangle from this information and use trigonometry to calculate the height above the ground of the meteor. I was asked to give a little more detail of the solution. Few if any of my students have ever been anywhere near Drumlemble so I decided to add a wee bit of background, quite irrelevant to the mathematics of the problem. Here it is.
Drumlemble is a small village close to Machrihanish. I grew up just a few miles from these places. Machrihanish is famous for its golf course, possessor of supposedly the most beautiful first tee in all of golf; its beach, stretching for a few miles up the coast to
Westport where the windsurfers hang out; the Seabird Observatory; its airport, quiet now but formerly a cold war NATO airbase boasting Vulcans (picture), Lightnings, Buccaneers, Hercules, etc., and indeed its very own nuclear weapons dump. In the 1960s the Machrihanish coal mine still operated, and the Campbeltown-Machrihanish light railway used to carry coal from the mine across the Kintyre peninsula to the harbour in Campbeltown. Apparently it involved an unusual narrow gauge of track that needed a special Act of Parliament. The railway closed in 1932 but remnants can still be seen, if you know where to look. Below Campbeltown Grammar School a curious narrow path, still known as "the Cutting", runs from Meadows Avenue to the seafront. Enclosed by the old railway embankment it was, probably still is, a preferred haunt of courting couples looking for a wee secluded corner in that spare half hour between lunchtime and the first afternoon class.
Drumlemble - "Drumlenan" locally - is essentially a small mining village and there is a wonderful portrait of the Machrihanish mining community in Jan Nimmo's documentary film, The Road to Drumlenan.
One of Machrihanish's grand sandstone villas has a funny wee hut in the garden which in the 19th century was a small, private observatory. I have read and forgotten most of the background - still got some photocopied details somewhere - but I believe the owner was a serious astronomer who went in to be involved in bigger observatories in other parts of the world. So I don't really know if anybody in Drumlemble was ever tried to do the sort of thing described in that question, but it is not completely unlikely. I might have chosen Machrihanish instead of Drumlemble but then there would have been two letter "M"'s in the question and that would never have done. With Drumlemble, Taynuilt and a (M)meteor we can talk about "triangle DMT".
Isn't Maths fun?
