Ileana Diaz

Reputation Score: 90

Submit An Answer

Answers ( 2 )

 
  1. K Grace-Lily 3000 Accepted Answer Community Answer

    Altitude and elevation are essentially the same thing used in that manner. Both describe a level above a specific point - there essentially is not a difference unless you view something as defined specifically. Both reference a specific start point but elevation references more landmass, as in elevation of hills and mountains. You wouldn't necessarily say anything about elevation in a plane over water, you'd use altitude. But if you were driving a car into the mountains, you could state correctly that the elevation is 9800 feet, or the altitude is 9800 feet and both would be correct.

     

    But for the point of cooking, high altitude is the proper term for usage, as altitude more defines the actual height of a particular location. 

    UTC 2020-07-30 10:29 PM 0 Comments
  2. Really they ought to call it "low atmospheric pressure cooking," since that's what they really mean -- for all they know, you could be in a subterranean bunker whose ventillation system reduces the ambient air pressure below one atmosphere.

     

    Of course the most common situation in which people find themselves in low pressure environments is living further from the center of the earth; there, the earth's gravitational pull is weaker and thus unable to squeeze as much air into a given volume.

     

    But as for the distinction between elevation and altitude, Wikipedia defines "altitude" as 

     

    a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The reference datum also often varies according to the context.

     

    "Datum" is a word I wouldn't be familiar with aside from a past life working with CNC machines, but it's essentially a fixed reference surface that you compute distances from.

     

    So according to Wikipedia, altitude can take a different surface as datum in different contexts.  In the context of cooking, then, we should presumably take our datum to be sea level -- or, equivalently since we're only talking in relative terms, we could take as datum any other sphere centered at the center of the earth [1], as long as we understand "high altitude" to mean "higher altitude than most people cook at." 

     

    [1] Technically, I mean an equipotential surface of the earth's gravitational field, not a sphere centered at the center of the earth.  These are slightly different because the earth isn't a perfect ball, although I doubt the difference is relevant to cooking.

    UTC 2020-07-30 09:56 PM 0 Comments

To answer this question, you must be logged in.

Create an account

Already have an account? Login.

By Signing up, you indicate that you have read and agree to Sage's Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy