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Climbing grade

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Old 06-03-07, 08:45 AM
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Climbing grade

I have Google map and I found the hill I ride. How do I work out the % grade
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Old 06-03-07, 10:21 AM
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Does Google maps have elevation information? I think Google earth does.
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Old 06-03-07, 10:29 AM
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Short version: Grade = (Change in vertical)/(Change in Horizontal)

Long version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28slope%29
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Old 06-04-07, 09:11 AM
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Sorry, Google earth. So I found my hill. Bottom of hill is 775ft and the top is 807. The distance is 935 ft. How do I work out the %
Thanks
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Old 06-04-07, 09:18 AM
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vert: 807 - 775 = 32 feet
horz: 935 ft
grade = vert/horz: 32 / 935 = .034 = 3.4% grade


edited - to change architectural terms to something more conventional.
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Old 06-04-07, 09:19 AM
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Originally Posted by cc_rider
rise: 807 - 775 = 32 feet
run: 935 ft
grade = rise/run: 32 / 935 = .034 = 3.4% grade

bingo!
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Old 06-04-07, 09:30 AM
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Easy way out: find the hill at https://www.toporoute.com and map just the hill. Click "Elevation" and read the stats at the top.

Be careful with short (<100ft) sections, as it seems the data are not suitable for accuracy at that level.

One note on Google Earth is that the distance measured is path distance, not horizontal distance. So, it's measuring the hypotenuse, and you want the base of the triangle. If you change the exaggeration, you will see the distance change. At 3.4%, the difference is small, but as you get steeper, this starts to have a bigger impact.
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Old 06-04-07, 09:33 AM
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Originally Posted by waterrockets
One note on Google Earth is that the distance measured is path distance, not horizontal distance. So, it's measuring the hypotenuse, and you want the base of the triangle. If you change the exaggeration, you will see the distance change. At 3.4%, the difference is small, but as you get steeper, this starts to have a bigger impact.
A point also covered in my cited Wiki article. Indeed, there is a difference between the tangent angle measurement and the cosine.
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Old 06-04-07, 10:15 AM
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Originally Posted by bdcheung
A point also covered in my cited Wiki article. Indeed, there is a difference between the tangent angle measurement and the cosine.
The difference is small for small angles. For almost any paved road, the difference between tangent and cosine is much smaller than your error in measuring elevation changes. This is especially true if you are using topo maps, since they do a huge amount of averaging that introduces lots of significant error.
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Old 06-04-07, 01:02 PM
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