Qibla locator...excellent for travellers!

tsmy

Sincere apologies if this has already been posted on here...

http://www.qiblalocator.com/

Forum

Funzo — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 - 22:50

[quote="M4k4v3l1"][quote="Ya'qub"]apparently I love in a small village called Ladysmith near Minneapolis...cool.[/quote]
u love? :D[/quote]
Yes hes been telling us about this village for a very long time indeed.

Joie de Vivre — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 - 22:57

Showed me a place called Bryan in Texas, somewhere between Austin and Houston. When I zoomed out and followed the line, it passed just to the east of a town called Mecca about 20 miles away.

So I typed in part of my address in Manchester and it told me to pray in the direction of the airport, Terminal 2, where you can catch a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Jeddah. Genuinely it did.

idi — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 - 23:08

you type your postcode in at the top left hand corner..............
n den it works it out....................
av tried it wid many diffrent places and it seem to be right

idi — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 - 00:05

because belive it or not, the world isnt flat like you see in your screen. get a 3d model of the globe and then u shud realize when your in america the shortest route to mecca is north east

Joie de Vivre — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 - 02:54

[quote="M4k4v3l1"]because belive it or not, the world isnt flat like you see in your screen. get a 3d model of the globe and then u shud realize when your in america the shortest route to mecca is north east[/quote]

Using Google Maps and my finger I estimate perhaps 8,000km from Texas to Mecca heading east, 14,000km heading west and about 20,000km heading north north east. Even though my finger isn't calibrated, with differences that large I can't be wrong concluding that the shortest route is straight east. There is categorically no shorter distance than straight east - trace that distance in any other direction and you'll see there's no chance. I just did another experiment to see what happens if you extend that short line until it reaches Mecca or anywhere near the Middle East, and it more than encircles the world. The circumference of earth is about 40,000km so we're talking perhaps 45,000km using the Qibla locator (from Texas) and 8,000km using Google Maps. The locator, however, mentions a distance of only 12,000km, so I don't know what it's doing.

From Manchester it does seem to point in broadly the correct direction. At a glance it still misses, passing north through Iraq, but maybe the earth's curvature accounts for that.

(Now, I'm no expert on which direction you should pray in, and it may not be as simple as the shortest distance.)

tsmy — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 - 10:23

[quote="Imaani"]It was spot on for me until I thought I'd test it by changing the position of my monitor.[/quote]
lol...i don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of the comments on here.

Naz — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 - 19:40

[quote="tsmy"][quote="Imaani"]It was spot on for me until I thought I'd test it by changing the position of my monitor.[/quote]
lol...i don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of the comments on here.[/quote]

well as seen as you cant decide i will do it for you.

Cry me a river hehehe (i think i better stop singing before it starts to rain lol).