Experienced computational scientists would not have approached this problem the
way that we encouraged you to do. Instead, they would have first written the
formula to be solved in symbolic form (without any numbers) and looked for a
way to simplify the formula algebraically.
You should try that out now. Using r to stand for the radius of the
earth and h to stand for the height of Kitty Hawk, come up with a formula
for the maximum line of sight distance.
Next, simplify the formula using your knowledge of algebra.
Finally, plug in the appropriate values for r and h and use Mathematica to
solve the problem using a number of digits that decreases from 10 all the way
down to 1. What do you notice now?
(4) Prepare a table showing the distance that you calculated for each
level of precision.
(5) Give a clear explanation of why the second approach to computing the
solution is so much better than the first.